Question

Reflection 500 words

What is your viewpoint about corporations as persons?

Answer 1

The idea that corporations have legal rights, and therefore a kind of personhood, is not an invention of contemporary conservatives. Its roots stretch all the way back through the history of American law and deep into the English common-law tradition. That tradition was captured most comprehensively — and communicated to the American founders most forcefully — by William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. The very table of contents of that work bears witness to the legal tradition of granting rights to corporate persons. Chapter 18, "Of Corporations," is placed in "Book the First: The Rights of Persons."

Corporations as legal forms, Blackstone explained, are "artificial persons," created by law "for the advantage of the public." The rights accorded to the corporate form, he thus suggested, were granted in order to encourage cooperation among individuals with a view to socially useful ends. Without the corporate form, an association of individuals could not make binding rules to govern its members or internal structure. Without certain rights, it could not hold property indefinitely as an association — the death of the association's members would mean the death of the association. Without granting corporations certain rights, individuals could not securely create an association that would have a life, an identity, and a mission that could continue from one generation to the next.

Because of this long tradition of legal understanding, it is not unusual for the word "person," when found in legal texts, to apply to corporations. In this common parlance, it simply means that corporations have certain legal rights and responsibilities. Congress acknowledged this principle explicitly in the so-called Dictionary Act of 1871, which laid down rules for construing federal laws. Contained in Section 1 of Title I of the United States Code, this provision notes that, "unless the context indicates otherwise," the "words 'person' and 'whoever' include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals."

To be sure, a given reference to "persons" and their rights in the Constitution may or may not be intended to refer to corporations. Frequently, as the language of the Dictionary Act indicates regarding the interpretation of statutes, it depends on the context. For example, the framers surely did not intend to refer to corporations when they provided that representation in the House of Representatives shall be determined with reference to "the whole Number of free Persons" in each state. The Census Bureau, then, quite properly does not count corporations when ascertaining each state's population. Similarly, when the Constitution holds that "no Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years," it is certainly not suggesting that a corporation could be elected to Congress.

And yet, one cannot easily dismiss the idea that some constitutional provisions do properly apply to corporations as well as individuals. But this is exactly what the left is now attempting with its flat, simple claim that "corporations are not people."