Corporations

 

People

People,
People who need people,
Are the luckiest people in the world.

Are corporations people?

The majority of US Supreme Court rendered an opinion in Citizens United v. the FEC, that corporations are people.  That majority opinion was based on the fact that corporations are groups of people.  If individual people have free speech under the Constitution, then, in that Supreme Court’s opinion, corporations must have the same right of free speech. It is important to determine if there are any differences between individual people, groups of people, and corporations.  People have a life expectancy.  People are born, grow up, grow old and then die.  They are not immortal.  This is no different for people in groups or people as individuals.  Groups of people can outlive the individuals in that group, but only if new individuals replace the current individuals.  Corporations also can live longer than people, but again only if new owners of the corporation replace the current owners of the corporation.  The question should be whether a corporation is only a group of people.

Corporations are chartered by the sovereign.  In nations where the sovereign is an individual, that is why the phrase chartered by His/Her, Royal Majesty is used.  Corporations predate the founding of the United States.  For example, the British East India Company, originally chartered as the “Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies” was founded in 1600.  Corporations in the United States, which remember are chartered by the sovereign of the United States, its people acting through the Constitution, can take four basic forms.

·       Limited Liability Corporations, LLCs

·       Schedule C Corporations

·       Schedule S Corporations

·       Nonprofits

Each of these types of corporations have different requirements for: filing, filing fees, governance, reporting, taxation, etc.  The commonality among all of these types of corporations is the protection of the assets of the owners of the corporation, e.g. people, from liability for the debts of the corporation.  The personal property of the owners of corporations is clearly an asset of the owners. The personal property of the owner does include their personhood.  Their personhood is protected by the Constitution.  The Constitution was amended to prohibit slavery and thus no person may be owned by another.  Persons thus may not sell or transfer their personhood to their corporations.  The question that should have been the basis for the opinion is whether the rights of people listed in the Constitution are also among those protected assets. If the right to free speech was not protected, then the SCOTUS majority opinion  was correct.  If the right to free speech is a protected asset, then the dissenting opinion was correct.  If the rights of free speech are an asset of the people, and corporation shields the assets of its owners from liability, then, this is a recognition that a corporation is not merely its owners, people, and thus a corporation does not have the right to free speech.  There is no question that the owners of the corporation have continue to have free speech.  It is just that when acting as a corporation they do not have the same right to free speech that is conferred to people.  Actions that may abridge the rights of free speech of the corporation, do not abridge the rights of free speech of the owners of the corporation.  Thus the rights of the owners still exist.  Those rights can not be transferred to another, i.e. a corporation. If the right can not be transferred, and that right is still retained by the owners, then the corporations do NOT have the same right to free speech. Corporations are owned by people, but that doesn’t make them people.