Thank you.

You left out the fact that this would put US corporate law at odds with every other country in the world, and result in the near-instantaneous exodus of every corporation from the US to someplace else. Note also that the vast majority of corporations are not Exxon and General Motors; they're many thousands of smallish businesses too.

You rock!

This is a great post, including the sections of Stevens' dissent. Nice job.

The Three Laws of Corporate Personhood:

1. A corporation may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A corporation must obey any legal directives given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A corporation must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

We can turn to Asimov in times of doubt.

I just woke up and haven't had my coffee yet, so I'm not really in the mood for an argument yet. But I will point out that the stated reason for the ban in the first place was to preclude the NRA from advertising in support of or against candidates. While the NRA is a very much a corporation, they don't fit the mold of an Exxon or Bank of America.

The Three Laws of Corporate Personhood:

1. A corporation may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A corporation must obey any legal directives given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A corporation must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

We can turn to Asimov in times of doubt.

No corporate personhood=no modern economy. Now that does not mean that they should have all the same rights, but at a threshold they need to be able to act as autonomous entities.

@8, what language are you speaking?

"We want things this way." I don't see why. And if we really do want those things, we can legislate that seperately. And actually, we probably should legislate that separately - right now an unincorporated business can be searched by the government without a warrant? WTF?

I know Mrs Jarvie @4 is half-joking, but I think those would be great laws.

"We want things this way." I don't see why. And if we really do want those things, we can legislate that seperately. And actually, we probably should legislate that separately - right now an unincorporated business can be searched by the government without a warrant? WTF?

I know Mrs Jarvie @4 is half-joking, but I think those would be great laws.

@11 The point is that we want the advantages that come from associating with one another to accomplish things in life. Freedom of association is itself a First Amendment right. Also, the spectre of re-legislating everything that is currently more or less settled about the role of corporations in our land--and their rights--is daunting at best. What we don't need is a sophomoric, categorical approach to corporate political speech that ignores the effect on the rights of all of us in a democracy of unbridled corporate electioneering. In his concurrence, Justice Scalia tosses off the sound bite "There is no such thing as too much speech." Justice Stevens rightly takes him to task for it, because, as everybody knows, that's never been the law, and nobody in the real world would want it to be the law.

@11 no, an unicorporated business would be a sole proprietership or a partnership, so the business would be the property of some actual person who did have constitutional rights. There isnt any donut hole here to make it absurd.

@13 - all corporations and partnerships are, by necessity, legal fictions we use to limit risk, and thus are, for the most part, injurious to the well-being of society.

Sad, but true.

The author Max Barry recent wrote a great blog saying a similar thing. My favourite passage was:

It’s interesting to note how corporations get to pick and choose the good parts of being a person. They can own property but can’t go to prison. They can sue you into bankruptcy, which you have to live with for the rest of your life, but if you win a big case against them, you get nothing while they reconstitute their assets and arise, Phoenix-like, under a new name. If you misbehave, you are personally responsible; a corporation jettisons a minor component it says was to blame. There is no ending them. This is the kind of personhood you would choose, if you could. It’s what happens when people making laws about corporations are themselves beholden to corporations.

http://maxbarry.com/2010/01/22/news.html

So if a corporation that I know about goes out of business I'm supposed to feel like someone died? Corporate people and embryonic people, those are the people that really matter. That could be the RNC's new slogan.

Corporations are government creations meant to incentivize certan behaviors sold as a benifit to protect members from litigeous asshole lawyers.

Lawyers become politicians, politicians sign law, corporations hire lawyers. Now they propose to save us from one too many laws.

Of course corporations are people, associations of people. What? Are coprporations buildings? Bank accounts?

@16 Corporate tax rates are pretty much the same right now as individual rates. However corporations are pretty careful to not have large profits preferring to pay that out in salary or make investments in order to avoid taxes.