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.
Corporations can be held criminally liable, but they can't go to prison. And while lots of countries have gotten rid of the death penalty, a corporation can actually be "executed" by getting dissolved.
At least for me, the problem is that making them completely equivalent in a legal sense has undesirable outcomes, like Citizens United. Having distinct terms allows for creating distinct, but potential overlapping sets of laws/privileges/rights. Using the same term makes it much harder to argue for distinctions in key areas
But they aren't completely equivalent. Natural persons can vote; juridical persons cannot. Natural persons have a constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination; juridical persons do not; etc. There's just a lot in common between the two, because it makes sense for there to be a lot in common. Citizen's United v FEC was a transparently terrible ruling, but it was in no way implied by the mere existence of corporate personhood. It was a significant expansion of the interpretation of corporate personhood that directly overturned a prior supreme court ruling on campaign finance regulation.
It was a major expansion, based solely on the reuse of the term. It’s why I used it as an example.
The main arguments boils down to that since corporations are people and have free speech, and that a natural persons financial activity is considered protected speech, that a corporate person should have the same freedom as there should be no distinctions about the rights afforded to a person.
The entire argument would have been moot if we used distinct terminology
There were then and still are now constitutional rights afforded to natural persons but not juridical persons. There is not some inability to distinguish the two. Look at the ruling that Citizens United overturned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_v._Michigan_Chamber_of_.... It was very clear that it's fine (and necessary) to restrict corporations in some ways precisely because they are not people.
Perhaps the argument of Citizens United wouldn't have been made if we instead used the terms "Human Shmerg" and "Legal Shmerg", but exactly the same argument could apply to shmergness as to personhood when discussing the rights afforded to shmergs of one kind or another, and the conservatives in the US really want to deregulate everything.
Thats exactly my point, you do not have to use the exact same term for both types. You could literally just use “person” and “corporation” as wholly distinct terms with overlapping rights afforded to each and avoid the edge case semantic arguments that create legal situations that the majority takes issue with.
I'd venture to guess that whatever legal logic resulted in the SC deciding that corporations should have the same right to free speech as individuals presumably doesn't hinge on any semantic blurriness between different subsets of "persons", and even if they didn't use overlapping terms it would still have ruled thus.
That said, it certainly is nice free marketing for our corporate overlords.
The entire cry of "corporations aren't people!" is based and a complete misunderstanding of what a legal person is. You've done a great job at explaining.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who willfully propagate these misunderstandings. Because by saying "of course corporations aren't people, and everybody knows this except those dumb <other side>", it's an easy way to try to vilify the other side as dumb/evil. When the reality is that it's simply a tried-and-true necessary and useful legal concept, that virtually nobody but lawyers would even be familiar with in the first place, if it weren't for activists who thought it sounded scandalous.
> The entire cry of "corporations aren't people!" is based and a complete misunderstanding of what a legal person is.
> if it weren't for activists who thought it sounded scandalous
It wasn’t activists who first misunderstood the concept, it was the Supreme Court, who decided that corporate personhood gives corporations the same first amendment rights as real personhood. It’s not ridiculous to point out that if freedom of speech is implied by corporate personhood, it was insane to give corporations personhood in the first place.
The Supreme Court was going to decide whatever they wanted, regardless of which linguistic terms were used to describe the underlying legal concepts which remain the same.
If you look at the text of the first amendment, the word "person" doesn't appear in that part. It says "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech." It doesn't say that the speech has to come from "persons". So I'd say you're the one misunderstanding here.
I think it was a dumb Supreme Court decision, but I'm not going to pretend it had anything to do with the fact that corporations are called a "legal person" instead of a "legal entity" or some other term that ends up meaning the exact same thing. Disagree with their decision, great. But arguing over legal terminology is a waste of breath.
> If you look at the text of the first amendment, the word "person" doesn't appear in that part.
This is irrelevant, but anyway it has the word “people” in it. Either way the bill of rights is a list of personal rights.
> The Supreme Court was going to decide whatever they wanted, regardless
The Supreme Court is also supposed to justify their position. It makes sense to protest their justification. That’s how the courts work.
Not a single activist would continue to protest if the ruling was overturned. Absolutely no one actually cares about what legal terminology is used beyond lawyers. It’s an effective slogan because it gets to the heart of why the ruling was so ridiculous. To change the slogan “corporations aren’t people” would either reduce accuracy or reduce understandability. It is the correct slogan, no matter whether the legal terminology continues to be useful
A few. But weighed against pretty much all of tort law and contract law, which heavily lean on the similar treatment, those are some pretty tiny edge cases that it's easy to say only apply to natural persons.
Is a corporation really a group of people? Of course people are involved with the corporation, but the corporation doesn't represent its employees, shareholders, management or customers. It's a separate legal entity with complex relationships with its employees, management, shareholders and customers, but with its own rights and responsibilities.
There are organisation forms that are a lot closer to being just a group of people working together, like co-ops and firms maybe. I'm not entirely up to date on all options in English-speaking countries (which will vary of course, but the Dutch Maatschap is probably as close as you can get to a company that's just a group of people.
Co-ops and firms sound like they are a subset of corporation. If they aren't, what makes them different in your mind? Corporations can take many forms and organize around many different principles.
Isn't a corporation incorporated or something like that? With limited liability and everything? Or does it also cover tiny 1 person outfits? I admit English isn't my first language, but I've always understood it to a be a specific form of company.
I believe it would be redundant to explicitly grant freedom of speech to an organization such as a union, as its individual members inherently possess this right.
And you will find similar reasoning in the Citizens United decision with respect to corporations:
> If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech. If the antidistortion rationale were to be accepted, however, it would permit Government to ban political speech simply because the speaker is an association that has taken on the corporate form.
> 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.
