Comment by foolswisdom 17 hours ago
The argument is that the need for abstraction doesn't mean we must reuse an existing concept. We should be able to talk about corporations as entities and talk about what laws or rights should apply, without needing to call them people.
At least for me, the problem is that making them completely equivalent in a legal sense has undesirable outcomes, like Citizens United. Having distinct terms allows for creating distinct, but potential overlapping sets of laws/privileges/rights. Using the same term makes it much harder to argue for distinctions in key areas
But they aren't completely equivalent. Natural persons can vote; juridical persons cannot. Natural persons have a constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination; juridical persons do not; etc. There's just a lot in common between the two, because it makes sense for there to be a lot in common. Citizen's United v FEC was a transparently terrible ruling, but it was in no way implied by the mere existence of corporate personhood. It was a significant expansion of the interpretation of corporate personhood that directly overturned a prior supreme court ruling on campaign finance regulation.
It was a major expansion, based solely on the reuse of the term. It’s why I used it as an example.
The main arguments boils down to that since corporations are people and have free speech, and that a natural persons financial activity is considered protected speech, that a corporate person should have the same freedom as there should be no distinctions about the rights afforded to a person.
The entire argument would have been moot if we used distinct terminology
I truly wish more people understood this.
The entire cry of "corporations aren't people!" is based and a complete misunderstanding of what a legal person is. You've done a great job at explaining.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who willfully propagate these misunderstandings. Because by saying "of course corporations aren't people, and everybody knows this except those dumb <other side>", it's an easy way to try to vilify the other side as dumb/evil. When the reality is that it's simply a tried-and-true necessary and useful legal concept, that virtually nobody but lawyers would even be familiar with in the first place, if it weren't for activists who thought it sounded scandalous.
But then why does a corporation need freedom of speech etc?
Because a corporation is a group of people, and a group of people don't lose their freedom of speech just because they joined a collective.
And corporations can stand for things. They can have missions and use funds to effect speech in support of causes that align with their beliefs.
Is a corporation really a group of people? Of course people are involved with the corporation, but the corporation doesn't represent its employees, shareholders, management or customers. It's a separate legal entity with complex relationships with its employees, management, shareholders and customers, but with its own rights and responsibilities.
There are organisation forms that are a lot closer to being just a group of people working together, like co-ops and firms maybe. I'm not entirely up to date on all options in English-speaking countries (which will vary of course, but the Dutch Maatschap is probably as close as you can get to a company that's just a group of people.
>the Dutch Maatschap is probably as close as you can get to a company that's just a group of people.
So the Dutch just go ahead and call a group of people a "mash up"!
And you will find similar reasoning in the Citizens United decision with respect to corporations:
> If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech. If the antidistortion rationale were to be accepted, however, it would permit Government to ban political speech simply because the speaker is an association that has taken on the corporate form.
But the existing concept by and large has the properties we want. The ability to form contracts, to be held civilly or criminally liable for misconduct, to own property, etc. That we say something is a juridical person isn't some kind of moral claim that it's equivalent in importance to a human, it's just a legal classification.