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Krasmaniandevil t1_j5qyq1m wrote

Reply to comment by WhittlingDan in On Whether “Personhood” is a Normative or Descriptive Concept by ADefiniteDescription

Corporations can be dissolved under certain circumstances, that's effectively what happened to Arthur Anderson after the Enron scandal. 13A bans slavery and involuntary servitude, and 14th amendment applies to persons born or naturalized in the USA, neither of which restricts the ability to own a corporation. Moreover, one doesn't "own" a corporation, but rather one owns shares in the corporation. Corporate personhood is a legal fiction, or at least it was until Citizens United...

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Anathos117 t1_j5qzsqd wrote

> or at least it was until Citizens United...

Citizens United had nothing to do with corporate personhood. The decision was based on the idea that if a group of people pool their money they shouldn't suddenly lose their right to free speech. And the decision didn't even cover all corporations, just unions and non-profits that were strictly political in nature.

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Krasmaniandevil t1_j5r1hhv wrote

It's a subtle distinction, but you're right. However, I would say that describing a corporation as an association of natural persons is just a theory of "corporate personhood" by another name.

I don't think there's a functional difference between restricting a sovereign's ability to distinguish between the rights held by natural vs. corporate persons and re-characterizing corporations as associations of natural persons that are entitled to the same rights as it's constituent members.

Edit: although the decision didn't apply directly to for-profit corporation, this only required those entities to establish a subsidiary entity to aggregate donations. It's a distinction without a difference.

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Anathos117 t1_j5r5ots wrote

> However, I would say that describing a corporation as an association of natural persons is just a theory of "corporate personhood" by another name.

I wouldn't. Think about it this way: what if you wanted to put out a political ad? You obviously don't have enough money yourself. But if you and 10,000 of your closest friends pooled your money, you could. But how do you store all that money while you're collecting it? How do you spend it? If you give it to Fred no strings attached, there's nothing stopping Fred from keeping the money for himself. So you need some mechanism that gives Fred conditional access to the money so he can only spend it on the political ad. We call that mechanism a "corporation".

Citizens United recognized that the only practical way for people to engage in certain exercises of their rights was collectively, so restrictions on corporations specifically formed for political purposes were necessarily infringements on the rights of individuals.

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Krasmaniandevil t1_j5r7lmt wrote

That's how I originally thought the court would rule. A decision that permits aggregating small donations while rejecting unlimited donations from for-profit entities was floated by the FEC and explicitly rejected by the court. In other words, SCOTUS explicitly rejected a decision that would allow for your hypo but would restrict unlimited donations from for-profit companies. (Read section II D of the opinion, I don't have pincites).

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Anathos117 t1_j5ra9w6 wrote

Did you actually read the argument though? The alternatives available to the Supreme Court were to strike down so many laws and rulings that for-profit companies could directly engage in electioneering, or carve out an exemption so conditional that it effectively wouldn't be useful for anyone else, therefore infringing on rights it shouldn't. And the Court couldn't find against Citizens United after the FEC made clear that they believed they could and would censor political books in the wake of such a decision.

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Krasmaniandevil t1_j5rd56y wrote

I believe that a conditional exemption would have been consistent with judicial minimalism, stare decisis, and deference to a coequal branch.

Personally, I think Citizen's United is an intentionally overbroad ruling that's predicated on creating a false choice and erring on the side of our corporate overlords (look at their waiver analysis and tell me it's applied the same way in other cases).

I also think they entirely devalued the interests in actual corruption, perceived corruption, and foreign interference.

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Anathos117 t1_j5rdsaq wrote

> Personally, I think Citizen's United is an intentionally overbroad ruling that's predicated on creating a false choice and erring on the side of our corporate overlords (look at their waiver analysis and tell me it's applied the same way in other cases).

That's a far different statement than your original claim that "Corporate personhood is a legal fiction, or at least it was until Citizens United..."

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Krasmaniandevil t1_j5rfajm wrote

My argument: Citizens United characterized corporations as "associations of citizens" to reach a result that is functionally equivalent to saying corporations have 1A rights so long as they use a third party entity. This holding was not dictated by precedent, and the court consciously rejected an approach that would have adjudicated the question in Citizen's United's favor on narrower grounds without doing violence to the primary purpose of the statute(s) in question.

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