

Should Corporations Have More Leeway to Kill Than People Do? - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/opinion/should-corporations-have-more-leeway-to-kill-than-people-do.html

======
hoodq19
As jaded as I sound, it's a little naive to look at this like its about law or
justice. Its much more about power and influence. And corporations have a
disproportionate amount of it.

I think we're all going to be a little disappointed next week and we'll have
three justices to thank: Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas. They have regularly allowed conservative platforms and
politics to come before law to influence their decisions. (And that's not
meant to be flame-bait for conservatives because when the liberals have the
majority, they pull the same stunts.)

The really sad is that after the Bush v. Gore decision and Citizens United,
the court lost its credibility and left the public entirely disillusioned with
the legal process.

------
ericHosick
Corporations are a legal entity created and enforced by government: an
abstract concept that exists only in the minds of people (same with
Government: an abstract concept that exists in the minds of people). As such,
to give a corporation more rights than individuals is really saying that the
principals, and perhaps employees, of that corporation are given more rights
than others (limited liability is an example of rights given to principals of
a company that individuals do not necessarily have).

Really, the headline should read "Should (some) People Have More Leeway To
Kill Than (other) People".

~~~
vannevar
_[T]o give a corporation more rights than individuals is really saying that
the principals, and perhaps employees, of that corporation are given more
rights..._

This is a common misconception, and probably at the root of the logical
fallacy that has resulted in the absurdity of corporations being treated
legally as conscious beings. In reality, decision-making and action can be so
diffused in a large organization that no individual could possibly be held
morally responsible for the resulting collective action. If you've ever been
caught in a human stampede, you will understand the feeling of being part of
something terribly destructive, and yet helpless to stop it. A corporation
(and any other large social organization) is a complex adaptive system, truly
a separate entity in its own right. But not an entity with anything resembling
human intelligence, and certainly not an entity that can be deterred by legal
sanctions any more than a mob can be deterred, short of sanctions that
actually dissolve the entity. The best we can do is to deter piecemeal
identifiable individual actions, but this does not come close to solving the
problem of regulating corporate behavior, and in fact can obscure the problem
by perpetuating the myth that for every corporate action there is a
responsible human decisionmaker.

