Comment by jabbywocker 15 hours ago
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
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
There were then and still are now constitutional rights afforded to natural persons but not juridical persons. There is not some inability to distinguish the two. Look at the ruling that Citizens United overturned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_v._Michigan_Chamber_of_.... It was very clear that it's fine (and necessary) to restrict corporations in some ways precisely because they are not people.
Perhaps the argument of Citizens United wouldn't have been made if we instead used the terms "Human Shmerg" and "Legal Shmerg", but exactly the same argument could apply to shmergness as to personhood when discussing the rights afforded to shmergs of one kind or another, and the conservatives in the US really want to deregulate everything.
Thats exactly my point, you do not have to use the exact same term for both types. You could literally just use “person” and “corporation” as wholly distinct terms with overlapping rights afforded to each and avoid the edge case semantic arguments that create legal situations that the majority takes issue with.
I'd venture to guess that whatever legal logic resulted in the SC deciding that corporations should have the same right to free speech as individuals presumably doesn't hinge on any semantic blurriness between different subsets of "persons", and even if they didn't use overlapping terms it would still have ruled thus.
That said, it certainly is nice free marketing for our corporate overlords.
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.
> The entire cry of "corporations aren't people!" is based and a complete misunderstanding of what a legal person is.
> if it weren't for activists who thought it sounded scandalous
It wasn’t activists who first misunderstood the concept, it was the Supreme Court, who decided that corporate personhood gives corporations the same first amendment rights as real personhood. It’s not ridiculous to point out that if freedom of speech is implied by corporate personhood, it was insane to give corporations personhood in the first place.
The Supreme Court was going to decide whatever they wanted, regardless of which linguistic terms were used to describe the underlying legal concepts which remain the same.
If you look at the text of the first amendment, the word "person" doesn't appear in that part. It says "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech." It doesn't say that the speech has to come from "persons". So I'd say you're the one misunderstanding here.
I think it was a dumb Supreme Court decision, but I'm not going to pretend it had anything to do with the fact that corporations are called a "legal person" instead of a "legal entity" or some other term that ends up meaning the exact same thing. Disagree with their decision, great. But arguing over legal terminology is a waste of breath.
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.