Comment by nzeid
3 months ago
> But I think the boring answer here is that we sometimes need legal abstractions.
Absolutely - the legal abstraction is that corporations are corporations, not people. The article went with a lighter hearted quip but here's my own tired old one:
If corporations are people, then owning shares is unconstitutional as that would be a form of slavery.
I don't understand this POV, can you explain what I'm missing?
Usually when people say "corporations aren't people" I think they are confused about the need for an abstraction. But you acknowledged the need for an abstraction.
I don't imagine you are confused about the status quo of the legal terminology? AFAIK, the current facts are: the legal term "person" encompasses "natural person" (ie the common meaning of "person") and "legal person" (ie the common usage of "corporation"). In legalese, owning shares of legal persons is not slavery; owning shares of natural persons is; owning shares of "people" is ambiguous.
I don't imagine you are advocating for a change in legal terminology. It seems like it would be an outrageously painful find-and-replace in the largest codebase ever? And for what upside? It's like some non-programmer advocating to abandon the use of the word "master" in git, but literally a billion times worse.
Are you are just gesturing at a broader political agenda about reducing corporate power? Or something else I am not picking up on?
The argument is that the need for abstraction doesn't mean we must reuse an existing concept. We should be able to talk about corporations as entities and talk about what laws or rights should apply, without needing to call them people.
But the existing concept by and large has the properties we want. The ability to form contracts, to be held civilly or criminally liable for misconduct, to own property, etc. That we say something is a juridical person isn't some kind of moral claim that it's equivalent in importance to a human, it's just a legal classification.
26 replies →
> The argument is that the need for abstraction doesn't mean we must reuse an existing concept.
but that's not what is happening, there are two concepts: "natural person" and "legal person". you could call them "foo" and "bar" if you prefer, those are just legal variable names.
Or you could just take the obvious and literally meaning of the phrase "corporations are not people" and not say that everyone who says it is confused. Corporations have different incentives, legal requirements, rights and responsibilities.
Well, then share buybacks are just the corporation reclaiming its freedom. Everything makes sense now...
Yeah, there's a difference between being a legal entity with limited rights, and being a person with full personhood. Citiziens United ignores that distinction. Just because people have certain rights, does not mean corporations should have the same rights.
It's an artificial legal construct, and its rights and obligations should be entirely subject to whatever society finds beneficial to the real people of that society.
Your slavery argument is an excellent argument. If corporations supposedly have the right to the same free speech as a person, shouldn't they also be free from the bondage of owners, i.e. shareholders?
And if corporations aren’t people, then the New York Times has no right to the First Amendment.
But their employees collectively do. I know this is not the approach the US court system decided to humor, but there's no way around journalists' rights.
The Constitution doesn't grant rights, it binds the government. The first amendment is a law that disallows the government from taking actions to infringe on any human's inherent rights, be they individuals or in a group.
It's about the dichotomy. If the NY Times has First Amendment rights then Pfizer does.
That annoys people because Pfizer is going to advocate for things some people might not like. But that's the cost of a rule that makes it so the NY Times can advocate for things other people might not like.
2 replies →
I'm curious what you think "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of [...] the press" means, in this case. Did you just not know what the actual text is, or ... ?
You see the reading “the press” as meaning some organization of people. You take it for granted that the freedom of the press applies to a business entity like the NYT and also to an individual blogger or any other person creating a publication.
The idea that people can come together to form cooperative groups and can use those to exercise rights through the idea of personhood is such a normal and legally settled idea.
The New York Times (the corporation, as a legal person) has the right to freedom of the press, not just individual humans who work there. This is good, because it means the entire institution is protected. Not only is the government forbidden from arresting the humans for operating the printing press, it’s also forbidden from sanctioning the corporation for hiring humans to operate the press. In other words, freedom of the press applies to corporations (eg. the Times) as well as human persons. I think you and the commenter you responded to both agree on the fundamental claim here, although you might disagree about the semantics of whether “corporate personhood” is a good way of describing this concept.
7 replies →
A restriction on government (as the First Amendment language is phrased) is not the same thing as an individual right. There are plenty of cases where a restriction is in the law, but only a very limited set of entities has standing to sue to enforce it. You could imagine such a case with regard to the First Amendment if we didn't have the corporate personhood doctrine.
1 reply →
Corporations commonly are persons, legally. Fictive persons, but still treated as persons. It's as if you could get a bank account for Tolkien's Gandalf.
Not correct: A share is a contract issued by the corporation entitling its owner to a share of future profits. So you're not buying a corporation, just engaging in a contract with it.
I hate Citizens United as much as the next guy, but this isn't a good argument against it.
No, the established language is very precise and you can run this by any source. Shareholders collectively own corporations by way of equity.
What about non-voting shares? Can it be ownership if you are not included in decisions? I've never really thought about it, but now I believe that what GP was describing is exactly how those are made (or should be made). So at least not entirely wrong (no wait, they would also include a share of assets on dissolution, but that too can be done through a contract with the entity owned by regular shareholders)
> A share is a contract issued by the corporation entitling its owner to a share of future profits. So you're not buying a corporation, just engaging in a contract with it.
A contract of indentured servitude (if you consider it a person), which we consider a form of slavery and therefore illegal.
Why does the next guy hate Citizens United? I’m not American, so this is the first time I’m hearing about them.
I read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC and it seems to me like a plain reading of the first amendment supports CU’s position.
Wouldn’t the opposing view imply that you are allowed to have political opinions, but only as long as you go at it alone and don’t organize too much with others?
For all I know that might indeed be a better way of running society, but that’s definitely going to take a big constitutional amendment.
The real issue is not so much the speech, but that money is considered speech in the US, so Citizens United apparently gives corporations the right to donate to political campaigns. A lot of people would like to stop that channel for corruption.