A Corporate person-hood question.

[Cimejes]

It has been established law(?) that corporations are people in fact people. Recently there been a question of weigher or not a corporation could donate to specific campaign. That lead me to this question. If a corporation is legally a person then should it be prevented from running for public office ( President Nike or Senator Exxon)? And if it was prevented from running for public office would that not be a first amendment right to free speech? I'm really curious about this issue. What do you guys think about it.

[mmw]

A corporation has the legal rights of a person, but that does not make it a person in a legal sense.

[deaconspire]

"It has been established law(?) that corporations are people in fact people"

Source, please.

[Pandemonium]

It is interesting to note that you have a person but are not a person. A person is a legal fiction. That person may have a similar name but it is a piece of paper and you as a human being are not. Corporations are persons and you have a person. All legal fiction. Your birth certificate is the representation of you as a person. However, a person may not be a corporation. A person is still a legal agent of the state which holds a bond in the corporation of the state. Your bond allows you to vote. Your person was created when you were registered with the state.

In some countries corporations have the same rights as persons. Others do not. In America corporations have the same rights as persons. Another thing is that persons do not have the same rights as a Human Being would.

The difference between persons and corporations is that you as a person has a bond in your country where as a corporation does not have a bond. Therefore, due to a corporation not having bond it has not right in discussion or decision in how the country is run.

[Entbark]

I'm trying to imagine why a corporation would run for office. Seems like that would be like the Democrats or Republicans running for office, except if you vote for one in the party, you are voting for the whole party. Not that great of an idea. I can't imagine anyone going with that in the USA.

[Crazyblue]

And you would have to find people who would vote for it... and watch the debates!

[nacht]

"It has been established law(?) that corporations are people in fact people"

Source, please.

1 U.S.C. §1 (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.):

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise— the words “person” and “whoever” include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;

There is also Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite's comment--not found in the actual decision, but made beforehand--on Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886), where he stated that:


The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.


We also see in Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston R. Co. v. Letson (1844):


A corporation created by and transacting business in a state is to be deemed an inhabitant of the state, capable of being treated as a citizen for all purposes of suing and being sued, and an averment of the facts of its creation and the place of transacting business is sufficient to give the circuit courts jurisdiction.