'Corporations Are People' Is Built on an Incredible 19th-Century Lie

[icymist]

Somewhat unintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. How exactly did corporations come to be understood as “people” bestowed with the most fundamental constitutional rights? The answer can be found in a bizarre—even farcical—series of lawsuits over 130 years ago involving a lawyer who lied to the Supreme Court, an ethically challenged justice, and one of the most powerful corporations of the day.

That corporation was the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, owned by the robber baron Leland Stanford. In 1881, after California lawmakers imposed a special tax on railroad property, Southern Pacific pushed back, making the bold argument that the law was an act of unconstitutional discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment. Adopted after the Civil War to protect the rights of the freed slaves, that amendment guarantees to every “person” the “equal protection of the laws.” Stanford’s railroad argued that it was a person too, reasoning that just as the Constitution prohibited discrimination on the basis of racial identity, so did it bar discrimination against Southern Pacific on the basis of its corporate identity.

The head lawyer representing Southern Pacific was a man named Roscoe Conkling. A leader of the Republican Party for more than a decade, Conkling had even been nominated to the Supreme Court twice. He begged off both times, the second time after the Senate had confirmed him. (He remains the last person to turn down a Supreme Court seat after winning confirmation). More than most lawyers, Conkling was seen by the justices as a peer.

It was a trust Conkling would betray. As he spoke before the Court on Southern Pacific’s behalf, Conkling recounted an astonishing tale. In the 1860s, when he was a young congressman, Conkling had served on the drafting committee that was responsible for writing the Fourteenth Amendment. Then the last member of the committee still living, Conkling told the justices that the drafters had changed the wording of the amendment, replacing “citizens” with “persons” in order to cover corporations too. Laws referring to “persons,” he said, have “by long and constant acceptance … been held to embrace artificial persons as well as natural persons.” Conkling buttressed his account with a surprising piece of evidence: a musty old journal he claimed was a previously unpublished record of the deliberations of the drafting committee.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852/

[RKP5637]

1. Chilling! It goes so much against the concept of a democracy and we the people. n/t

[Angry Dragon]

2. embrace artificial persons as well as natural persons.

that would seem to cover robots
interesting

[Cicada]

3. The New York Times and Washington Post are corporations, no free speech?

The post is an llc, same thing. So we need to be careful we don’t argue corporations have no constitutional rights.

[ThoughtCriminal]

4. If corporations are "People" how do we prevent same-sex mergers?

Obviously, we will need a way to determine the gender of a corporation.

[JayhawkSD]

5. The 14th amendment was ratified in 1868

The legal principle of corporations as persons was already established in law as early as 1818 in the case of Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, long before the 14th amendment was extant, in which the court "recognized corporations as having the same rights as natural persons to contract and to enforce contracts."

In 1823, still well before the 14th amendment came along, the Supreme Court decided Society in the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts v. Town of Pawlet in ruling that same property right protections applied to corporate-owned property as to property owned by natural persons.

The legal case cited in the article, Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific, was not about whether corporations are persons, which was already established as a point of law, but whether or not, as persons, the protection of the 14th amendment applied to corporations. So the claim that corporations as persons was established by the lies promulgated by Conkling in the course of this case are incorrect. That principle had been well established long before Conkling got involved with the Southern Pacific Railroad.

That does not mean that I agree with the status of corporations as persons. I don't, I think it's ridiculous. But that doesn't mean I support using false argument to support the position. Let's leave that kind of dishonesty to Republicans.

[icymist]

6. Wow! That's some great information there.

I understand that you see the people-hood of corporations as ridiculous. I love how you quote the 1818 decision in this or the 1823 ruling as president, but all I have to ask is where are the links. You really want me or any one else reading this to do the work you just have? I'm sorry for my arrogance here, I do enough work on the internet.

[JayhawkSD]

7. Original references from Wikipedia.

On article about found with search for "personhood of corporations." The article cited those two cases first, and Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific third. I then did searches for those three cases to confirm the nature of the rulings.

If you don't want to believe me without me leading you to the online references, that's fine with me. I'm not selling anything and have no vested interest in what anyone believes. I offer reality. Take it or leave it.

[MurrayDelph]

8. We need to start arresting corporations

when they are suspected (or found guilty) of malfeasance. Force a virtual arrest by requiring a cease-and-desist of all activities (including income), and the heads of the corporations will be begging to not be considered people.