
'Corporations Are People' Is Built on a 19th-Century Lie - elsewhen
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852/?single_page=true
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CyberDildonics
If corporations were people, they would be subject to things like the 3
strikes law and the death penalty. People don't get the chance to simply pay
fines for harming people.

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freech
The employees of corporations are absolutely subject to things like the 3
strikes law and the death penalty for things they do for the corporation. So
it makes sense that they have the same rights when they do things for the
corporation.

It would be inconsistent to say: If you do something in the employment of a
corporation you have same duties as anyone who acts on his own, but none of
the rights.

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oldcynic
Yes but, if corporations _themselves_ are legally persons it should be the
_corporation_ that is tried for murder, and potentially sentenced to death.
I'm not sure how you'd imprison a corporation under the 3 strikes law, but I
leave that as an exercise for the Supreme Court

Otherwise they are wanting the rights of a person with none of the obligations
and thus should not have them.

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IntronExon
Let them be people, with all of the liabilities, responsibilities, and legal
obligations as people. Otherwise what are we really talking about? The rights
and privileges of personhood, but without any of the accountability? How
absurd it is.

 _Indeed, the faux precedent in the Southern Pacific case would go on to be
used by a Supreme Court that in the early 20th century became famous for
striking down numerous economic regulations, including federal child-labor
laws, zoning laws, and wage-and-hour laws. Meanwhile, in cases like the
notorious Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), those same justices refused to read the
Constitution as protecting the rights of African Americans, the real intended
beneficiaries of the Fourteenth Amendment. Between 1868, when the amendment
was ratified, and 1912, the Supreme Court would rule on 28 cases involving the
rights of African Americans and an astonishing 312 cases on the rights of
corporations._

Absurd!

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srtjstjsj
What this shows is that judicial decisions are not based on "lies" or anything
else. They are _opinions_ ; judges make decisions and work backwards toward
reasons. The very existence of dissenting opinions shows that any case can be
decided any way a justice wants. In the 19th Century, that meant that justices
took away rights that the 13-15th Amendment tried to to protect.

