Recent Trends in Corporate Personhood and the Overexpansion of Corporate Rights

[Speaker to Animals]

Being able to sue someone is not a Constitutional Right, and taxing is a governmental function regardless of legal doctrine. People have Rights, corporations should not. Perhaps you aren't arguing that they should but you should say so. Your posting implies that corporations do & should have Rights.

Damned if Alexander didn't beat me to it.

Uh.. yeah.. it's definitely a constitutional right, dude.

[Martin Hash]

Being able to sue someone is not a Constitutional Right, and taxing is a governmental function regardless of legal doctrine. People have Rights, corporations should not. Perhaps you aren't arguing that they should but you should say so. Your posting implies that corporations do & should have Rights.

Damned if Alexander didn't beat me to it.

Uh.. yeah.. it's definitely a constitutional right, dude.

Oh, well, you win, corporations are people.

[Speaker to Animals]

Being able to sue someone is not a Constitutional Right, and taxing is a governmental function regardless of legal doctrine. People have Rights, corporations should not. Perhaps you aren't arguing that they should but you should say so. Your posting implies that corporations do & should have Rights.

Damned if Alexander didn't beat me to it.

Uh.. yeah.. it's definitely a constitutional right, dude.

Oh, well, you win, corporations are people.

I didn't say they were people. Stop with the bullshit slogans.

A corporation, by definition, is a legal person. It's a legal fiction that makes it possible to treat corporations as persons for the purpose of legal action, taxation, regulation, and so forth.

The debate is not whether a corporation is a legal person but, rather, what rights we wish to assign to that legal fiction.

[Martin Hash]

NO Rights. Only people have Rights.

If you want legal protections for your legal fiction then okay, go for it, but Citizens United gave corporations the Freedom of Speech, something that never should have happened.

[Alexander PhiAlipson]

Unions are people, too!

[de officiis]

Being able to sue someone is not a Constitutional Right, and taxing is a governmental function regardless of legal doctrine. People have Rights, corporations should not. Perhaps you aren't arguing that they should but you should say so. Your posting implies that corporations do & should have Rights.

Isn't there something in the Seventh Amendment about jury trials?

[clubgop]

NO Rights. Only people have Rights.

If you want legal protections for your legal fiction then okay, go for it, but Citizens United gave corporations the Freedom of Speech, something that never should have happened.

Citizens United was not about that. Freedom of Speech is not a right distributed to this or that but not this. It is an implicit restriction on government action.

http://www.salon.com/2010/01/22/citizens_united/

If the Constitution or other laws bar the government action in question, then that’s the end of the inquiry; whether those actions produce good results is really not germane. Thus, those who want to object to the Court’s ruling need to do so on First Amendment grounds. Except to the extent that some constitutional rights give way to so-called “compelling state interests,” that the Court’s decision will produce “bad results” is not really an argument.

[Speaker to Animals]

Exactly.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It's black and white, unless you want to be a sophist and pretend it's a "living document" that means whatever you need it to mean at any given moment to fit your ideology.

[Speaker to Animals]

But, also, I don't think people should lose their human rights by virtue of having organized into a group. To argue that is the case, really, is a form of tyranny. The people who rail against corporate personhood usually do so because they lament the fact that they are unable to coerce corporations to do their bidding.

[Martin Hash]

Cool, what corporations want is obviously good for people. Just ask Phillip Morris. (BTW, how come cigarettes can't be advertised on TV?)