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_at_brouhaha.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Cc: <classiccmp_at_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.]
>
>
>
Received on Tue Jan 16 2001 - 18:33:58 GMT