This sort of thing scares me quite a bit, mainly because some states,
notably Texas, would be likely to go totally fascist while others, might
well go the other way. I don't find comfort in either extreme.
There's plenty of case law that supports one notable difference between the
rights of an individual and that of the "artificial person" built in to a
corporation. That difference, and it's probably not the only one, is that
while you can't punish a person for being stupid, though you can make
him/her liable to injured parties, while corporate entities can be penalized
for failing to behave responsibly, even in a technical sense. I'only sure
of one thing, however, and that's that it's never that simple.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Smith" <eric(a)brouhaha.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Cc: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2001 5:11 PM
Subject: [OT] Corporation's rights (was Re: Nuke Redmond!)
John Tinker wrote:
No, companies are limited liability constructs of
the state. They fall
under the same social contract that the state does, even more so. Yes,
we can, and should, insist that corporations be ethical. The nature of
a corporation's "rights" is quite different than the nature of an
individual's rights.
Unfortunately, the U.S. courts have "legislated" that corporations are
"artificial persons", and have the rights thereof. This has caused lots
of problems.
There are people tring to get this fixed. The proposed Citizen's
Sovereignty Amendment would eliminate this nonsense, and return to the
states (under the 10th Amendment) the right to regulate corporations:
http://28th.org/
[Personally I don't think it has a snowball's chance in hell of getting
passed and ratified, but it's a worthy cause.]