The Fallacy of Corporate Personhood

You probably know two people in your town like these:

The first, a woman who knows times of pretty good living and other times of struggle, she still takes care of her family and her community even when years are tough. She raises a couple of kids and supports them as they explore where to take their lives. When a cousin hits a wall, this woman takes in her cousin's son and raises him the best she can. People respect her and like her and, when she passes on, her many contributions to the community are sorely missed.

You've probably met this next person, too, or at least read about him. In his younger years and as an adult, he never lacks the physical comforts of life. His struggles lie elsewhere--too much drinking, and an appetite for every pleasure he can imagine. He secures a prestigious position with a large company, but his work keeps him away from his family. A DUI (driving under the influence of alcohol conviction) leads to an expensive court case. And his children, as they grow older, struggle with unhealthy appetites of their own. He contributes to his community in ways that are expected of someone in his line of work. When he passes his obituary is long but the memorial service for him seems proper and well rehearsed. He is politely missed even as a few breathe a sigh of relief that he will no longer drive while under the influence of a controlled substance.

Two people in your town. One maybe more good than bad. One maybe more bad than good. They share a human trait, however: both are mortal. Whatever good or ill they brought to their town had only so long to affect the community. And then they died.

If only the same could be said of corporations and LLC's (limited liability corporations).

When members, or shareholders, or directors of certain businesses die, the businesses don't necessarily die with them. With the right operating or management agreements, some businesses can survive beyond the founder's death. The companies are said to enjoy what the law describes as a perpetual existence. And their ability to survive unlimited human lifetimes can prove to be a most pernicious reality, especially when coupled with the growing list of rights bestowed on businesses by the legal fiction of corporate personhood: rights to free speech, the right to equate political spending with free speech, and the right to pursue legal actions against others just as a human being of means might do. But there is a terrible inconsistency in how corporate personhood has been interpreted.

Maybe every time you go to the dentist, you must endure the ministrations of an overly muscular dental hygienist. If you don't change dentists all together, you may resign yourself to a clean but sore mouth every six months or so and comfort yourself with the awareness of the hygienists' increasing age. Happily for you, s/he will eventually retire.

There is a natural limit to a human being's influence on the earth. And sometimes that's a very good thing.

On the other hand, a corporation, or limited liability company--at least as currently defined in the U.S.--can set itself up to deliver pain for a very long time. If it's an oil company that causes the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history, it can survive that catastrophe. Oh, it may shed a director or officer or three, but that destructive entity--especially if it has vast economic resources--can survive to pollute another day. Its criminal behavior or negligence may have caused the deaths of some of its workers and/or neighboring community members, but the company can survive even that.

There are few humans who wield such power that they can go on with their lives largely unchanged after a felony conviction or after they are required to pay great civil damages.

Some businesses, on the other hand, seem to weather such legal consequences with hardly a stutter to their operations. Companies such as these will have multiple lifetimes in which to threaten the lives of other mortals who have only one existence in which to pursue their dreams.

Corporate personhood has been immorally granted to these U.S. businesses. To bestow on them the rights granted to individuals by the U.S. Constitution even as the corporations are given immortality--these paired characteristics saddle the rest of us poor mortals with a ridiculously disadvantaged position.

And I haven't even explored a corporation's ability to shield its stockholders, board and officers from personal liability, yet another madness in which an entity that exists on paper is held liable while the actual human beings who made the decisions for the business and acted in its behalf are not to be held liable when the corporation runs into trouble. That's another insanity to explore. Real people would love to be able to shield themselves from liability, too.

The courts could somewhat level the playing field between often contending corporate and human interests: U.S. courts could finish the job of defining corporate personhood by limiting a corporation's existence to the average life expectancy of we poor mortals. That way, if the country is forced to endure the unscrupulous practices of a particular business, at least we know we won't have to suffer its selfishness forever. We can comfort ourselves with the understanding that a cruel or greedy corporation, like the less than favorite fellow citizen in our town, must inevitably pass from earthly existence. And at the natural end of such a corporation, should it attempt to resurrect itself, the community and the state could examine its preceding record to decide whether a corporate charter should be granted to individuals once involved with a corporation that abused the people or land where it did business.

If corporations are to be termed persons, then they, as we, should exist knowing they will eventually die. We make decisions based on this understanding. So should they.