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Comment by throwoutway | Hacker News Reader

Interpreting corporations as “people” IMO was such a misread of the constitution that it’s led to various interpretations here. These are corporations, not people. We need to stop applying people’s rights to corporation and then we’ll return to logical deductions

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> Interpreting corporations as “people” IMO was such a misread of the constitution that it’s led to various interpretations here. These are corporations, not people.

Corporations have been legal persons for many centuries/millennia:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation#History

The same principle applies to (professional) societies, communities/municipalities, guilds, unions (locals), universities, etc:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University#History

Be curious to know about the legal history of treating legal and natural persons differently.

I’ve been reading what you linked and I see nowhere that the all the same legal rights of PEOPLE were applied to corporations for millennia. Not sure if you actually found that either?

Either way, I’m arguing that it is an unintuitive idea in light of the fact that the Bill of Rights was written with people in mind as the recipients of those rights, and not corporations.

If Google suddenly invoked their “right” to bear arms and form well regulated militias, we wouldn’t be swirling our oat milk saying “well they have the right”.

I’m arguing they shouldn’t

> I’ve been reading what you linked and I see nowhere that the all the same legal rights of PEOPLE were applied to corporations for millennia. Not sure if you actually found that either?

Ability to partake in contracts, due process of law, have internal rules of conduct (like having a conscience). Are these not rights that both both 'types of persons' have?

> There are therefore two kinds of legal entities: human and non-human. In law, a human person is called a natural person (sometimes also a physical person), and a non-human person is called a juridical person (sometimes also a juridic, juristic, artificial, legal, or fictitious person, Latin: persona ficta).

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_person

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juridical_person

IANAL.

Ya that doesn’t say they had the ALL the same rights as people. You’re actually proving my point that they’re different by people and got a different definition with different interpretations, NOT the same

Corporations are not the same as people in the US and there are many rights that people have that corporations don’t. They are legal persons in the sense that they can sign contracts and have the right to a fair trial and have a right to free speech.

Private militias already exist in the US and are legal. There is absolutely nothing stopping google from forming one. Should they? No. Would it be completely legal to do so? Yes.

I am looking at a copy of European Legal History, Robinson, Fergus, Gordon, Oxford 2000, 3rd ed. Section New Trends in Law 1814-1914, discusses "17.2 - organization of business" and provides some answers.

- Corporations "prior to 19th century" were 'privileges' granted by a sovereign, not 'rights'. East-India among others is an example. (17.2.6)

- "The joint stock company is an incorporated body, a legal person in its own right, distinct from its shareholders and directors. This eases the path of those having commercial dealing with it ..." (17.2.5) goes on to enumerate how corporation as a legal person suites the modern economic regime. So basically, corporations are legal persons because of Capitalism. (My op.)

- ps

which is imo not a bad thing, actually. This is a classic case of a legacy decision/design in a system made at a time when there were more limited knowledge and information. And task is how to unravel the error without taking down the whole system. What we want is a legal scope around the person-hood of a corporation that allows for good (if not optimal) economic regime (in general, possibly including ethical dimensions), and yet does not distort the distinction between human beings -- and we have Natural Rights that are conferred by none other than the Goddess/God/Big Daddy/The Architect/"Fundamental-Laws", take your pick /g and can not be taken away by any legal mechanism -- and corporations don't, because we are a first order side effect of the Universe and these things are just organizations.

> So basically, corporations are legal persons because of Capitalism.

See The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession by Brundage, which has a few chapters on law during the Roman period, as well as chapters on the creation of universities, along with mentions of things like guilds and town charters, which were collective groupings of people treated as a single entity.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Brundage

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University#Definition

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_University_in...

Going back to Ancient Rome for non-commercial purposes:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associations_in_ancient_Rome

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collegium_(ancient_Rome)

Key point is all those were privileges granted by the monarch. You did not have a right to start a company, so whatever affordances were given to pre-19th century organizations by the state, they were grants.

Thank you! This is what I am saying, treating corporations as people has caused so many problems it might just destroy the whole country! Non-US folks pay attention and make sure this cancer doesn't spread to your country.

AFAIK this is normal in other countries.

In Belgium, we have the distinction between a natural person (a human) and a legal person (might be a corporation), and laws specify the required personhood.

So too late for Belgium?

While I agree that corporations should not be considered people, there’s literally a century of legal precedent built on that faulty interpretation, and the courts are not the appropriate forum to unwind it; it’s too deeply enshrined. Congress must legislate.

Courts can legislate by precedent as well.

Actually, it's considered legislating when stare decisis is abandoned.

Didn't stop the Supreme Court from reverting the Roe v Wade "superprecedent" recently.

So we can agree that some interpretations are bad/wrong/illogical?

The rationale is that corporations are made up of people, and there is no way of denying fundamental rights to corporations without also denying those rights to the people making up and interacting with those corporations. In essence, corporate personhood an argument that rights don't cease to exist when being expressed in aggregate.

It also allows certain conveniences, such as being able to sue a corporation as an entity, and corporations being able to enter into contracts as entities, own property, etc.

How do groups of people not have the rights of people?

They already do, as people.

A group of people together have no right to free speech but individually they do?

I don’t see how that could possibly work.

Who said that? They continue to have rights within the group as well, and they can make whatever group decisions they would like.

This doesn’t imply that we need to accept corporate personhood for all purposes.

No this is not what he said. You don’t need to treat the group differently. Since all people have free speech in the group, then the group effectively has free speech as well no?

Right, which is basically what the Supreme Court said.

A group of individuals as a corporation still have constitutional rights.

Arguing in favor of making clear legal distinctions between humans and corporations does not automatically imply denying them a right to free speech. It may seem that way when we say: the declaration of human rights does not apply to corporations, because they are inhuman, but we actually argue in favor of a declaration of corporate rights, not against it. The key point is that Corporations are more than just groups of people. But more so we want this distinction because we want an effective Corporate Criminal Law.

We give corporations certain legal rights that humans do not have, such as the ability to avoid individual responsibility for corporate crimes or debts.

It sort of makes sense that you can't stack rights - you either get to choose your human rights, or your corporate rights (which may have limits that your human rights cannot).

That's a non sequitur.

You asked: How do people, as groups of people, not have the rights of people?

I answered: They do, as people. Nothing about their position in or outside of groups affects that.

Where is the non sequitur?

Corporations exist as creations of congress and legislated into existence.

Congress may not pass laws that seek to silence our ability to speak freely.

What you’re suggesting is that because these special entities are run by private individuals and not government employees they’re not effectively bound by the first amendment.

Schools exist as creations of legislation as well, but they are run by government employees. Speech cannot be silenced by schools.

Your assertion is that since companies, created by legislation, are run by private individuals they can silence speech all day long.

The question is, does the 1st amendment apply to government employees or anything borne out of legislation by congress?

Let me ask you the inverse— should an entire HOA all go to jail if one resident commits a crime? No. It’s not “groups” of people, like you’d find at a concert/meetup/HOA/whatever.

If it was, then the whole group should be convicted of crimes everytime the corp ignores a law and commits a crime.

But no— different groups exist for different purposes, on paper incorporated under a set of laws.

It’s a business, intent on generating profits and many times they break laws. Next time you want a corp to have ”people” rights, consider the inverse to

> Let me ask you the inverse— should an entire HOA all go to jail if one resident commits a crime?

If all the people in the HOA conspire to commit a crime, using the HOA organization meetings to plan, HOA funds to execute the crime - then yes?

This is precisely it.

Corporations exist as creations of congress and legislation.

Can congress and legislation be used to create entities that can then be used to surveil, and curtail our freedom of speech?

If so, isn’t congress passing legislation that limits free speech through an intermediary?

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