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fennecbutt

Et al is for people, Et cetera is for things.

Edit: although actually many people on here are American so I guess for you aws is legally a person...

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As an American who studied Latin:

Et al. = et alii, "and other things", "among other things".

Etc. = et cetera, "and so on".

Either may or may not apply to people depending on context.

> although actually many people on here are American so I guess for you aws is legally a person...

Corporate legal personhood is actually older than Christianity, and it being applied to businesses (which were late to the game of being allowed to be corporations) is still significantly older than the US (starting with the British East India Company), not a unique quirk of American law.

Oh I didn't how that, thanks for the lesson.

Tbf it just sounds...so American, so I assumed, my bad. But East India Company was involved...whew I guess that does make sense, oof.

What is unique in the US is the interaction between corporate personhood and our First Amendment and the way that our courts have applied that to limit political campaign finance laws, and a lot of “corporate personhood” controversy is really about that, not actually about corporate personhood as a broad concept.

People also get confused about the Citizens United ruling. It had nothing to do with corporate personhood.

The ruling said that since a person has first amendment rights, those same rights extend to a group of people—any group—whether it’s a non profit organization, a corporation, or something else.

Well, it's also what allows the executives, boards, and owners of companies to be divorced from the consequences of their actions in a legal sense much of the time.

Source of it being older than christianity?

I don't think that's a hard and fast rule? I think et al is for named, specific entities of any kind. You might say "palm trees, evergreens trees, etc" but "General Sherman, Grand Oak, et al"

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