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Nathan Newman :
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More recently, "free speech" and other "associational" rights have been raised to try to block a range of regulations. Let me give one example. At one point, California required Pacific Gas & Electric to include a flyer by a consumer group, TURN, advertising to ratepayers their ability to join TURN and support a consumer advocate against higher electric rates. The US Supreme Court struck down this law as violating the free speech rights of PG&E against having to be associated with the views of TURN.
Believe me, in the legal work I do on economic regulation, corporate opponents cite their constiutional rights against violations of equal protection, free speech, due process and a range of other rights to combat economic regulation. Corporate personhood is indeed one of the deadlier weapons against democracy in the United States. We had a period after the New Deal when this was largely abandoned, but it is creeping up on us day-to-day and is likely to accelerate in the coming years as more reactionary jurists extend their control of the courts.
^^^^^^^ CB: Well, you learn something everyday.
How do they use equal protection ? What would be a suspect classification that a corporation could fall into ? :>0
The Wikipedia note
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood ; check out the "neutrality dispute" on the note)
on this points out that certain "personhood" characteristics of corporations ( "bodies" from the Latin; Frankenstein monsters as well as Joanna's Dracula)predate the confused interpretation of the 14th Amendment. If a corporation couldn't own property, it would be pretty much worthless for the purposes for which it was created ,i.e. shielding owners from personal liability.
I always thought the corporate veil/limited liability was the main purpose of the corporate form. Nathan's project below seems to have more to do with new ways to pierce the corporate veil ( great !) than making corporations non-persons. Piercing the corporate veil is , in a sense, reducing the corporation to the natural persons behind the veil.
In terms of the 5th and 14th Amendments, the only personlike quality that a corporation can have really is owning property, not life or liberty. If a corporation were "jailed" or "executed" , the owners could just start a new one. The real issue is what happens to the property it owns. Corporations are "economic or commercial persons" only.
These constitutional rights are not an absolute bar to government regulation of corporations, because they aren't absolute bars to regulating natural persons. Due Process doesn't bar government from taking private property from a natural person. It bars government from taking private property from a natural person without due process or without just compensation. The same would be true of corporations as artificial persons.
By the way, the 5th and 14th Amendments apply to the federal government too. So it is not just state regulation of corps that is limited by this legal theory.
^^^^^^
Actually, many labor and environmental laws have criminal sanctions built in. They are just rarely invoked. Part of the point of corporate personhood is to divert attention from individual responsibility of managers and shareholders. Only the corporate entity is legally responsible, not the individuals involved.
I've actually been working with a coalition on NYC legislation to hold the shareholders of restaurants in the city individually responsible for minimum wage and other labor violations by barring them from the industry for five years. There would also criminal sanctions if they lie to the city about their track record of labor violations. What's amazing is how freaked out most people are by the idea of really holding corporate owners responsible for the actions of their companies.
Nathan Newman