In any other nation that has private mandated insurance, is a corporation considered a person?

[Fumesucker]

They are in the USA and if they're not in some other country then the situations are not comparable.

[tsuki]

1. Switzerland has private mandated insurance. The primary insurers

must be non-profit. Only secondary insurers can be for-profit.

And I think Australia views corporations as fictional persons, not sure about that one though. I read something a while back about them organizing against corporate personhood.

[jobycom]

2. That's what a corporation is. That's the definition.

A corporation is a legal entity treated as a fictitious person.

[ThomCat]

3. That second part was not part of the original definition.

It was added by a judge simply because he apparently felt like redefining corporations.

Corporations were originally organizations, not people.

[jobycom]

4. No, that's wrong, even though it's what some people think it is.

A corporation is a fictitious person, by definition. The word comes from "corpus," meaning "body," and to incorporte is the give body to something. The whole point of the legal structure is to be able to treat a group of investors as a single legal entity. It's been that way since ancient times.

The ruling in Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad in the late 1800s didn't create the concept of "person" for corporations. That was always there. What Santa Clara sort of did (although this is so misrepresented it's practically an urban myth these days) was declare that as a person, a corporation was protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. This wasn't even new, this was just a reiteration of the prevailing legal opinion of the time. The exact statement by the Court was "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." The ruling is more ambiguous than it seems at first glance. It can be interpreted as meaning only that the protection of the law can't be denied to a corporation, not that all laws and rights applying to individuals must apply to a corporation.

That interpretation was strengthened in 1906 when the Court ruled that even though a corporation was a legal person it was not protected by the 14th Amendment from state regulations limiting its rights.

But the Santa Clara County didn't create the idea of a corporation as a legal person, it just ruled that the legal person deserved some of the same protections as an actual person. The definition of a corporation is a legal person, and always has been. It's in the word itself.

[ThomCat]

5. I think you would have to find some proof of that.

If corporations were, in fact, always intended to be people, then they would have been recognized as people under the law from the beginning, and that just isn't the case.

They were not treated as people under the law until less than 125 years ago. So clearly the understanding of what a corporation is changed at that point.

I think you are rewriting history.

[jobycom]

7. Do any search on corporate law.

It's not hard to find.

Actually, Wikipedia's article on it is pretty good. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

"Seven years after the Dartmouth College opinion, the Supreme Court decided Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts v. Town of Pawlet, (1823) in which an English corporation dedicated to missionary work, with land in the U.S., sought to protect its rights to that land under colonial-era grants against an effort by the state of Vermont to revoke the grants. Justice Joseph Story, writing for the court, explicitly extended the same protections to corporation-owned property as it would have to property owned by natural persons. And, seven years after that, Chief Justice Marshall stated that, "The great object of an incorporation is to bestow the character and properties of individuality on a collective and changing body of men."<11>"

and

"It should be understood that the term 'artificial person' was in long use, prior to the Dartmouth College decision, and was in principle distinct from any contention that corporations have the rights of natural persons. 'Artificial person' was used because there were certain resemblances, in law, between a natural person and corporations. Both could be parties in a lawsuit; both could be taxed; both could be constrained by law. In fact the corporations had been called artificial persons by courts in England as early as the 16th century because lawyers for the corporations had asserted they could not be convicted under the English laws of the time because the laws were worded "No person shall....""

----------------

It's a good article. It points out what I was saying, that corporations are defined as persons, and that the Santa Clara case seems to have given them some of the rights of people, but that later rulings have limited those rights.

The question is how far those rights go, and that's not been tested much in the courts, because there isn't much will (or much money) to stand up to them. Maybe a good argument for better defining the limitations on corporations is to save court costs when corporations sue for rights, but again, it's the will of our governments that is lacking more than the authority of them.

Here's an interesting case: "In 2008, Blackwater sued the City of San Diego to force the city to issue them a certificate of occupancy for its training facility in Otay Mesa before the plan went through the city's public review process. "U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff ruled in Blackwater's favor. Blackwater is a person and has a right to due process under the law and would suffer significant damage due to not being able to start on its $400 million Navy contract.""

Notice that San Diego tried to block Blackwater specifically, and Blackwater sued saying "You can't single us out like that because we have rights." That's in essence what I think the Santa Clara case was arguing--that a corporation can't be singled out and denied protections on an individual basis when the law protects other corporations from such denial. It's like (they argue) discriminating based on race of disability against a person. That's a case where Santa Clara has an impact. And it's an interesting debate because if a government can restrict a corporation arbitrarily, can they not restrict it for reasons that would violate an individual's rights? Say a corporation focuses exclusively on a gay clientelle--can a town in the south refuse to let them rent property because the corporation itself is gay? If you say no, the corporation has no protection, then you empower that town to discriminate against the individuals through the corporation. Since no individual is trying to rent the property, there is no discrimination against an individual.

Anyway, corporations are defined as legal persons (or fictitious persons, or articifial persons) and this has always been recognized by law, and it has been recognized that corporations are also different from actual persons and don't have the same protections. The question is where the lines are drawn. And the problem is that our governments are too timid or too broke or too weak to even bother drawing lines. Santa Clara just gave corporations a stronger legal footing. By the same token, Northwestern Life Insurance vs Riggs (1906) put limits on that footing. There's just no one with the courage and money to define those limits.

[Fumesucker]

6. Is a corporation more powerful than a person?

I think it's clear that many corporations in our democracy wield far more power than any regular citizen.

Should an amoral and immortal entity whose entire purpose is basically avarice be allowed to lobby government?

[jobycom]

8. My answer is no, and the legal answer is no, but...

I agree with you entirely that corporations have too much power over government. But that's not the fault of the definition of corporations, nor of the Santa Clara case. It is the fault of timid legislators, and the fault of the expenses of our legal system (which prevents, say, a small city from battling Exxon in court). Maybe even the fault of a slim majority of our voters, who don't understand the problems and vote appropriately. If we change corporate law or even do away with corporations completely, whatever takes their place (presumably partnerships, which would create whole other problems) will still have the money and still control our government. And we'd still have chickens for legislators and we'd still get the shaft.

As for whether "an amoral and immortal entity whose entire purpose is basically avarice be allowed to lobby government," I think yes, they have to be allowed that, or else moral and finite entities wouldn't have that right. If you can block Exxon or State Farm, you can also block the Sierra Club. Ralph Nader lobbied Congress against disclosure requirements on corporations, for instance, because he wanted to protect the privacy of some of his investors, as well as the privacy of other corporations. Should he not have had the right to lobby? That's not really rhetorical, I can think of arguments for either answer.

Lobbying is beneficial when done by the good guys, and evil when done by the bad guys. It's the only way, for instance, the Sierra Club can educate Congress on the negative effects of a farming bill. Not all lobbying is evil--a corporation can lobby Congress to show them that a bill meant to help one industry might actually hurt another, for instance, or even hurt a community. That happens all the time. Again, the problem isn't the lobbying, it is the people being lobbied. We need politicians who can stand up to the lobbying and make decisions based upon what's best for people instead of what's best for their campaign coffers.

There should be stronger restrictions on lobbyists and lobbying, I agree with that, and more restrictions on corporate donations to political causes. Even then, though, rich people will find a way to be heard more than poor people. And as we've seen, we don't even know where the limits can be drawn, because we don't elect anyone with the courage or integrity to pass legislation.

Yes, corporations are too powerful, no they shouldn't (and don't) have the same legal protections as individuals. But what we really need is the national will--and that starts with voters--to stand up.

[sabrina 1]

9. That's a good question especially considering

the 14th Amendment. I don't think the purpose of that amendment was to give equal protection to persons who are already powerful. It was to protect those who were disadvantaged and without power.

To your question about amoral entities being allowed to lobby the government. I suppose you can't stop anyone from doing that, but it would be nice if the government told them to 'get lost'. But when the government too is immoral, that's hardly going to happen.