A recent article on the Straight Dope Web site says that in a famous 1886 case the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations are “persons” having the same rights as human beings based on the 14th Amendment, which was intended to protect the rights of former slaves. Not to nitpick, but the Supreme Court made no such decision. If you look at the case in question, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, you see that the court itself never rules on personhood. A court reporter by the name of J.C. Bancroft Davis (a former railroad president) snuck that “ruling” into the books. –bex, via the Straight Dope Message Board
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Most people have a general idea what corporations are. Some may even know that, for most of U.S. history, corporations have been considered “artificial persons.” The concept isn’t as nutty as it sounds. From a legal standpoint, corporations can do many of the same things that natural persons do–buy and sell property, hire and fire, sue and be sued, and so on.
You’re thinking: By what tortured reasoning did the Supreme Court decide that corporations were protected by the 14th Amendment, which everyone knows was enacted to protect the rights of real people? Answer: Apparently it didn’t decide. As revealed by our friend bex–and detailed by Thom Hartmann in Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights (2002)–the whole thing began as a courtroom comment by a judge, which was elevated to the status of legal precedent by an overreaching court reporter.
