Can somebody please explain to me the Supreme Court decision that...

[icymist]

allowed corporations to the same rights as human beings? As I understand, this decision was voted in the negative by the Supreme Court and, because of a clerical error, the opposite became the law of the land?!? How...in the world....does a cleric...over-ride a Supreme Court decision?! Lawyers, please explain this!...

[charlie]

1. Not in the court decision

It was inserted into the summary of the Santa Clary County decision by the clerk. Believe it or not.

[icymist]

2. Then how can a clerk over-ride a Supreme Court decision?

Why has such a thing stood for so long? Let me clarify.... I was led to understand that the Supreme Court in the above mentioned decision had declared that corporations had no legal rights as human beings. It was then written, as a clerical error, that corporations do have the same rights as humans. If this is true than our system of government is insane! (not to mention corrupt)

[charlie]

4. Dunno

Clearly, it was something monied interests wanted for a long time, and it's said the court clerk was an agent of the railroad industry. So I guess it was a matter of getting something, anything into the books that sympathetic courts could deem precedent and use to justify rulings, creating further precedent, ad infinitum. Amazingly, it worked.

[rman]

7. not over-ride,

My take is that the clerk's 'mistake' was convenient to certain elements within the Court. So no-one pointed out the mistake, leaving it as (misguided) precedent. Presumably the clerk was in on it.

I'm curious as to what the actual text of the mistake is.

[icymist]

11. I think there should be a focus on this.

eom

[Daphne08]

20. I agree. There is no way a corporation should ever have

been granted personhood.

[GreenPartyVoter]

43. Absolutely, but somehow we have to break the corporate hold

0ver the government in order to get this revoked.. And for obvious reasons this will not be easy.

[punpirate]

31. The summary is known as...

... the "head notes." In talking to lawyers, they say it is all too common for judges to refer to the head notes in a case, and in some cases, that has created "some very bad law," according to one I talked to about it.

The crux of the question is in how the Clerk of the Supreme Court (in those days--1886--a very powerful position, paying more than the position of Chief Justice) alluded in the head notes to a comment made in court by the Chief Justice on the issue of personhood for corporations under the 14th Amendment. The Chief Justice said that the court considered it a settled matter and the court would not address the claim in the Santa Clara County case, and when one reads the actual decision, the issue of personhood, indeed, doesn't appear in the decision--it's decided on the basis of tax law.

So, introducing the Chief Justice's remark about the issue being "settled" in the head notes created the impression that it was addressed in the decision, and was addressed favorably for corporations.

Thom Hartmann has a pretty good book on the subject and that case, Unequal Protection, and finally comes to conclusion that there's no way to determine if the clerk of the court was in on it and created the opening intentionally, or if it just written badly and was exploited later. His history, prior to becoming clerk, was very corporate; but, then, so was the history of most the judges on the court. Hartmann says he just wasn't able to find any conclusive proof in the court papers.

The interesting fact brought up by Hartmann is that Hugo Black had his clerks do a survey of all cases involving claims under the 14th Amendment and found that less than 1.5% of them concerned the rights of natural persons. The remainder of the cases were filed by corporations seeking expanded rights under that amendment.

Cheers.

[icymist]

33. Thank you pun pirate. Tax law?

Granting personhood was in the same as declaring tax law? Man oh man! This decision needs to be challenged!

[punpirate]

38. The original case concerned...

... a claim by Santa Clara County, CA that Union Pacific Railroad was not properly paying county property taxes. The SC eventually found for the railroad.

The problem is that cases that came after that used the decision (because of the head notes) to reinforce the position of corporations as having 14th Amendment rights. The cumulative effect of all those cases is that the law is well-settled, even though the basis for which was improper.

Likely, the only way to return the law to prior to 1886 would be a Constitutional amendment redefining corporations as artificial persons under law and not entitled to rights under the 14th amendment, and that the rights guaranteed under the Constitution are reserved for natural persons (i.e., human beings).

The chances of passage of that, these days, are so slim you'd need an electron microscope to see them.

Cheers.

[icymist]

54. Punpirate you are correct.

It appears that the wording of the 14th Amendment of our Constitution is what started to create this mess. Ironic! An amendment created to free people being slowly turned around to enslave them:

It has been argued that the men who wrote the 14th Amendment specifically meant for the word person to be a loophole which you could drive a giant corporation through. Apparently in one of the railroad cases an attorney who had been on the committee that drafted the amendment waived a paper before the court claiming that it documented such; but the paper was not entered as evidence, nor apparently was it shown to anyone, nor was it saved. However, careful research has shown that, John A. Bingham the member of Congress who is known to have been chiefly responsible for the phraseology of Section One when it was drafted by the Joint Committee in 1866, had, during the previous decade and as early as 1856-1859, employed not one but all three of the same clauses and concepts he later used in Section One. More important still, Bingham employed these guarantees specifically and in a context which suggested that free Negroes and mulattoes rather than corporations and business enterprise unquestionably were the persons' to which he then referred.

http://www.iiipublishing.com/afd/santaclara.html

~sigh~

[charlie]

Oy

That last paragraph is dismaying.

[Seabiscuit]

48. Summaries aren't precedent. Only the actual opinions are.

[RoyGBiv]

52. The following text ...

The following text was entered into the summary of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad by the court reporter:

"The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This language exists nowhere in the ruling itself.

This bit of text has been used a precedent by numerous courts ever since, specifically in the 1889 decision of Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad Co. v. Beckwith, in which the majority opinion cites the Santa Clara case ("It was so held in Santa Clara Co. v. Railroad Co. ...") as precedent in affirming the principle.

[Seabiscuit]

56. If it was ever cited in any case as precedent

that just means that there were some lazy judges and attorneys in those cases.

I don't know the entire history without having the original case citation and having an opportunity to Shepardize it to the present, but if any attorney or judge were paying any attention, then it's likely that any case ruling relying on a court reporter's summary as opposed to the actual text of the case would be overturned.

[RoyGBiv]

57. This is well established ...

I agree that using the summary as precedent is not sound practice. The fact of the matter is that it was done, and it's not exactly a secret that this is the case. I'd welcome someone trying to overturn Beckwith, which is the first SCOTUS case to cite Santa Clara as precedent, but no one has, and subsequent decisions have entrenched the principle contained in this summary to the point that merely overturning that one decision would not necessarily have the desired effect.

Several posts in this thread by myself, punpirate, and others have given adequate citations and explanations of the cases involved.

But, here is the original case and the case that cites it as predecent. Note that the second case, the Beckwith case, cites the first in the following manner:

"It is contended by counsel as the basis of his argument, and we admit the soundness of his position, that corporations are persons within the meaning of the clause in question. It was so held in Santa Clara Co. v. Railroad Co., 118 U.S. 394, 396 , 6 S. Sup. Ct. Rep. 1132, and the doctrine was reasserted in Mining Co. v. Penusylvania, 125 U.S. 181, 189 , 8 S. Sup. Ct. Rep. 737."

SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PAC. R. CO., 118 U.S. 394

MINNEAPOLIS & ST. L. R. CO. v. BECKWITH, 129 U.S. 26

The text of the Santa Clara decision does not "hold" any such thing regarding the status of corporations as persons. The summary, in which the justice's pre-argument statement was effectively included, does.

[Seabiscuit]

60. Thanks for taking the time to do the research.

You sound like you're an attorney like myself.

I haven't read any of the cases being discussed in this thread (except I have come across a few cases that treat corporations as "persons" for certain purposes). I find it very unfortunate that any judge would make the mistake made in the Beckwith case - apparently he/she was too lazy to actually read the text of the opinion in Santa Clara as opposed to the summary. And the attorney whose client would have benefited from reading the actual text of the case apparenty really screwed up.

Somewhere along the line I think we all were told in law school *not* to rely on summaries or headnotes when researching cases. It's tempting, because it makes it so much easier and less time consuming, but one day one of us may come across a case where we might rely on them to our peril. It sounds like the clerk or transcriber in the seminal case being discussed here got the holding backwards in the summary appearing at the beginning of the text of the case. And I imagine that error also made it into the headnotes.

I had one really interesting experience in one federal trial where the critical issue of the case I was arguing at trial came down to one case precedent. The judge ordered myself and opposing counsel to research the issue and we both came back to court citing the same key case we'd both located. Opposing counsel spoke first and cited it for the proposition put forth in the headnote, which favored their position. When it came my time to speak, I noted first that my legal research professor in law school admonished us always to read the complete text of a case and not to rely on the headnotes, and that this was the first time in my practice where it really paid off to heed his advice; then I quoted from the actual text of the case the exact language which completely contradicted the holding noted in the headnotes, and as a result the judge ruled in my client's favor and I won the case at trial.

[wli]

3. whatever's going on there smacks of fraud

In any event, formally repudiating corporate personhood seems like a difficult task when we're stuck trying to defend the Bill of Rights, the integrity of elections, and racial equality.

[icymist]

5. This is an old decision from the 1860's.....

My argument is why have we allowed this to happen and, in future debate, why is it not challenged?! I mean, come on! A Supreme Court decision over-turned by a clerical error and it's allowed to go on for decades? Centuries? Why is this not challenged?

[wli]

6. the entire country has been taken over by corporations

Do you think we can really effectively challenge this now?

Federal representatives who don't vote as Cheney tells them to get assassinated, there is fraud on the House floor, and the executive has assumed dictatorial powers. We have even bigger problems than corporate personhood having no basis in actual judicial decisions.

[icymist]

8. Actually, I think this to be the root cause of all our problems.

When the US handed person-hood to corporations, an abstract entity, that suddenly has the same rights as citizens, there became a grouping of sorts that had in it's goal, to seize power. That's what we're experiencing now. We can and should attack this threat to our country in every angle presented to us.

[wli]

12. accountability is difficult for an intangible, immortal person

You can't send it to prison, you can't execute it, etc. There's no real way to stop it.

[icymist]

22. If that is so, than why does it have the same rights as a citizen?

eom

[icymist]

25. I mean to say that if a citizen commits a crime, they go to prison.

Why is this not the same for a corporation that commits such crimes as knowing polluting a community, knowing full well that it's actions will cause cancerous deaths in that community?! Why shouldn't that corporation itself, be put to death?

[rman]

26. We could not infringe on the obligation of a corporation to make profit.

Which of course is ridiculous, but that's how things have panned out, due to corruption, conflict of interest etc. It implies the system has been sabotaged since forever, and that the elements that benefit from the sabotage are a major force.

There used to be state laws stating that a corporation could indeed be 'put to death' if it had misbehaved, and reportedly in many cases these laws still exist. But if no-one knows, and no-one calls on it, these laws are ineffective.

[icymist]

47. What would prevent the corporation from moving to say, Aruba?

Then, under the guise of 'free trade' continue their evil practice in the same state that wanted to dissolve it?

[RoyGBiv]

53. And so it goes ...

From this we get into so-called globalization, the desired end-result of which is corporations existing above any and all laws and effectively operating as their own nation-states. This is a rather significant tangent to what we've been discussing here, but it is related in the sense that this is where we're headed.

"Free trade" is itself a complex subject on which I find myself torn in various directions based on immediate and long-term interests. But, as you imply, "free trade" in the eyes of corporatists and their political supporters is code for corporations functioning outside of the control of individual people.

[wli]

58. yes, they're basically trying to go stateless

[blurp]

13. Corps are powerful because there is strength in numbers.

Remember that corporations aren't all for-profit.

The AARP is a corporation. So is the ALF/CIO.

They get their strength by coming together and organizing. They don't lose their rights as individuals simply because they associate or work together as a group.

[rman]

16. "numbers" - it's called money.

their strength is in the wealth they aggregate.

[rman]

10. It is possible because many of the old state laws are still in the books

Old state laws that govern corporations, for instance;

- A charter was granted for a limited time.
- Corporations were explicitly chartered for the purpose of serving the public interest - profit for shareholders was the means to that end.
- Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
- Corporations could be terminated if they exceeded their authority or if they caused public harm.
- Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts they committed on the job.
- Corporations could not make any political contributions, nor spend money to influence legislation.
- A corporation could not purchase or own stock in other corporations, nor own any property other than that necessary to fulfill its chartered purpose.


The People can demand these laws are uphelt, one or two cases of just that are documented in the docu "The Corporation" www.thecorporation.com.

Granted though, now might not be the best time to do this on a national level.

A most excellent resource on the matter is
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/

[blurp]

9. There is some logic to it

First, don't forget that corporations don't have to be money-making.

Second, if individuals have rights, they they shouldn't lose them simply because they join together as a corporation.

For example, the ACLU is a corporation. Should they have a free speech right? I think they do, as individuals or as an organization.

[icymist]

14. Yes. But do those individuals deserve double rights...

when the voice their opinions through a corporation and then through being a solitary citizen? Where does the common worker have such a double right granted to them?

[rman]

15. It's about *corporations* having similar rights as individuals, not

about the individuals who joined together as a corporation.

When a corporation is created, a new, soul-less, body-less entity is created that is seperate from the individuals who joined together to form the corporation. This new entity has similar rights and in many cases more rights then human individuals.

[icymist]

17. Exactly!

I might add that this corporation is an abstract entity that has rights as a human being!

on edit for spelling and grammar.

[annabanana]

39. but they don't seem to have the "responsibilities" of

individuals, do they? hmmm

[lostnfound]

42. True. They can't get drafted or imprisoned; they get to deduct expenses

from their income..

[rman]

18. i think i found the text

via wikipedia;

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad

List of United States Supreme Court cases
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_Cases#1880.E2.80.931899

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=118&page=394

U.S. Supreme Court
SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PAC. R. CO., 118 U.S. 394 (1886)

118 U.S. 394

COUNTY OF SANTA CLARA
v.
SOUTHERN PAC. R. CO. 1

PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
v.
CENTRAL PAC. R. CO.

SAME
v.
SOUTHERN PAC. R. CO.

Filed May 10, 1886

<more>

[icymist]

21. Thank you for these lnks. So far I have found that....

this so-called rulling was brought about because of the railroad and "subjected to use of the United States for postal, military, naval, and all other government service"subject to the use of the United States for postal, military, naval, and all other government service,
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=118&page=394
Okay so this also involved an act of Congress?
By an act of the legislature of California, passed April 4, 1870, to aid in giving effect to the act of congress relating to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, it was declared that 'to enable the said company to more fully and completely comply with and perform the requirements, provisions, and conditions of the said act of congress, and all other acts of congress now in force, or which may hereafter be enacted, the state of California hereby consents to said act; and the said company, its successors and assigns, are hereby authorized to change the line of its railroad so as to reach the eastern boundary line of the state of California by such route as the company shall determine to be the most practicable, and to file new and amendatory articles of association; and the right, power, and privilege is hereby granted to, conferred upon, and vested in them to construct, maintain, and operate, by steam or other power, the said railroad and telegraph line mentioned in said acts of congress, hereby confirming to and vesting in the said company, its successors and assigns, all the rights, privileges, franchises, power, and authority conferred upon, <118 U.S. 394, 400> granted to, or vested in said company by the said acts of congress, and any act of congress which may be hereafter enacted.'

[rman]

23. I'm affraid i'm not much help

in analysing and pointing out the significance of legal texts.

We need some lawyer types on this.

[charlie]

27. You don't have to parse the decision

It wasn't a ruling on corporate personhood. The decision was reached on other grounds.

[icymist]

32. Could you please explain those 'other grounds' please?

I wish to understand every angle of this giving of human civil rights to an abstract corporate entity.

[charlie]

35. They're immaterial, really

The railroad refused to pay taxes owed Santa Clara County because when the state assessed taxes, it included some fences the railroad contended only the county had jurisdiction to tax. The court agreed.

[rman]

19. Anno 2005, corporate rights supercede Human Rights

Corporate rights have been expanded ever since Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company.

Free Trade tribunals/Free Trade courts are now apparently more powerful then Supreme Court, International Court.

NAFTA's chapter 11

"...gives corporations rights to sue governments in special tribunals, for unlimited compensation for profits lost due to normal governments activities."

"...there have been cases, like "Metalclad".
An American company called "Metalclad" went down to Mexico to build a toxic waste dump on an aquafer; the local supply of water. The government said "no, this goes against our environmental laws".
The people are getting poisoned from the water - what corporation has a right to poison our water? The government passed a law that said "no, you can't operate this thing".
They said "that's to bad, we have rights as a corporation that outweigh your human rights". They sued them for 17.5 million dollars saying it was a barrier to fee trade.
This US corporation takes the Mexican government to a NAFTA court, sues under this chapter eleven, and the ruling is - the Mexican government has to pay millions of dollars in "penalties", for "lost profits" of this corporation."

from the documentary "Trading Freedom" (Indymedia)
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/01/284511.html

also documented at

Berkeley University
http://are.berkeley.edu/courses/EEP131/classpresentations/Metalclad.pdf (PDF)
(turns out the amount in penalties to be payed by the Mexican government was reduced, but "...the judge agreed with the NAFTA panel on the merits that the actions of the Governor constituted expropriation".

New York Law Journal
http://www.clm.com/pubs/pub-990359_1.html

Stop FTAA
http://www.stopftaa.org/article.php?id=37

"NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-to-State Cases: Bankrupting Democracy"
http://are.berkeley.edu/courses/EEP131/Nafta_Chapter11.pdf (PDF)

[RoyGBiv]

24. Grab a chair ...

I'm not going to attempt to explain it all right now because I was about to go to bed, but I saw this thread and wanted to clear up some misconceptions. It takes more than a summary, however, for a person to truly understand how all this works.

First and foremost, there is no single case that decided corporations had the same rights as human beings. There is a case that defines a corporation as a "person" for purposes of due process, which is in turn based on precedent (of dubious logic) establish in previous cases, which was in turn influenced by certain elements of common law in addition to Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), in which the Court ruled that a corporate charter could not be altered by the government.

In other words, there are numerous Supreme Court cases that, collectively, define a relationship between the government and the entity known as a corporation that, now, effectively grant the latter constitutional protections as though they were citizens. The corporation has the right to due process, the right of free speech, protection against illegal search and seizure, etc. The SCOTUS recognition of corporate rights took place through a number of cases extending into the 20th century.

The case y'all seem to be talking about is 1889 case of Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad Co. v. Beckwith, which was one of many cases related to railroads decided in the 1880's. This was the case in which the Court ruled a corporation was a "person" for purposes of due process and equal protection, under the 14th amendment.

The following is the relevant section:

"It is contended by counsel as the basis of his argument, and we admit the soundness of his position, that corporations are persons within the meaning of the clause in question. It was so held in Santa Clara Co. v. Railroad Co., 118 U.S. 394, 396 , 6 S. Sup. Ct. Rep. 1132, and the doctrine was reasserted in Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania, 125 U.S. 181, 189 , 8 S. Sup. Ct. Rep. 737. We admit also, as contended by him, that corporations can invoke the benefits of provisions of the constitution and laws which guaranty to persons the enjoyment of property, or afford to them the means for its protection, or prohibit legislation injuriously affecting it."

The point the railroad company lawyer was trying to make was that claims against the company for not building a fence to protect against injury to livestock were depriving it of due process and equal protection. The Court affirmed the lower court ruling against the railroad company, but accepted the argument that the corporation was deserving equal protection and due process; the Court simply asserted that due process and equal protected was being followed with the ruling.

[icymist]

28. So where do the courts grant the rights of humans to corporations?

Now-a-days these corporations flaunt these so-called rights in the faces of every working American. We see examples of this in the courts.... in lawsuits....how the corporation are experiencing a loss of it's civil rights..... or how the corporations right to free speech is infringed upon because 'we the people' dared to challenged it!?! I'll respect your time for sleep.... God knows how I must sleep with a midnight job..... I'll watch for your answer tomorrow sometime. Peace! icymist

on edit for spelling and grammar.

[RoyGBiv]

44. Subsequent decisions ...

It goes something like this:

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad: provides precedent, even though the ruling itself does not touch the question. As others have noted, the clerk of the Court entered a statement by one individual given prior to arguments, Justice Morrison Remick Waite.

Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad Co. v. Beckwith: text of ruling explicitly states corporations are persons for purposes of due process and equal protection.

Noble v. Union River Logging Co.: Extends corporations' claim to constitutional protections to the Bill of Rights, specifically the 5th Amendment.

Lochner v. New York: Establishes the doctrine of "substantive due process," which was used to fight government regulation.

Hale v. Henkel: Grants corporations 4th Amendment protection against search and seizure, including a corporations financial records. This has been modified to some extent over the years, but the basic principle is still there. It brings you Enron.

Armour Packing Co. v. U.S: Corporations have the right to a trial by jury, 6th Amendment.

Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon: Further refines the 5th Amendment protection by declaring regulations are effectively "taking" property without due process.

Grosjean v. American Press Co.: Ruling asserts the 1st Amendment allows a corporation to sell advertising without being taxed.

Taft-Hartley Act: This law effectively establishes a corporations right to free speech as superior to labor's right to free association.

Ross v. Bernhard: Corporations granted the right to a trial by jury in civil cases.

Buckley v. Valeo: I *hate* this decision for what I think are rather clear reasons. The decision essentially asserts that money is speech and is a huge basis of the problems with money in elections. The ruling asserts that a corporation contributing money to a political candidate is invoking its right of free speech.

VA. Pharmacy Board v. VA. Consumer Council: We have a new term, "commercial speech," which this decision declares is also protected by the 1st Amendment.

By the way, we're up to 1976 now. While the foundations of all this were set by the robber baron courts of the 1880's, the solidification of the principle of corporate person-hood has a long history.

I could go on from here to a few more recent cases, and I will add that other cases address the ones above and modify them in various ways. It's been a running battle. But, aside from a few dissents along the way, most famously by Justice Hugo Black who asserted in a dissenting argument in 1936, "I do not believe the word "person" in the Fourteenth Amendment includes corporations," corporate person-hood has become entrenched. Removing it, as punpirate stated, would require, most practically, a constitutional amendment. Otherwise, one would have to construct a case or series of cases that successfully overturned each and every one of these other cases. Simply (not that it would be simple) overturning Beckwith would not be enough.

[rman]

29. thanks ever so much

i'll be looking forward to further explanation

[RoyGBiv]

46. The Corporate Person/Slave

I've been obsessed with late 19th century politics and law since college, inspired partly by a professor who did his PhD dissertation on what he called the Robber Baron Court.

I've posted other replies on this, but I'll take the opportunity to note an interesting contradiction in all this.

These rulings collectively define a corporation as a person.. Yet, some of these same rulings also declare the supremacy of the stockholders in the operation of the corporation. The rather dubious logic accepted today is that corporations deserve the same rights and privileges of citizens because the stockholders have those rights and privileges. But, in applying this logic, the Court has created a separate and distinct entity, i.e. the corporate person.

What this effectively means is that the corporate person is owned collectively by the stockholders and is subject to their arbitrary will, which is a raw definition of slavery. If the corporation is a "person," as it pertains to constitutional protections, then by the logic that establishes this doctrine, it is also a slave, which in turn violates the 13th Amendment. I'd contribute significant sums of money to an enterprising young lawyer willing to test this in the courts. It has never been addressed in such a manner.

[rman]

59. kick - enterprising young lawyer wanted

IANAL - but i wonder if it would not be more effective to directly challenge the notion that a corporation is treated as a person separate from the individuals who own/direct/operate the corporation while there is no possibility to hold such a 'corporate person' accountable for what it does, and/or to point out that this is in conflict with older (in many cases still existing) state laws regarding regulation of corporations.

[charlie]

30. Thank you

I notice that Santa Clara is the primary citation of precedent in the Minneapolis case. The clerk's headnote had its intended effect.

[RoyGBiv]

34. That's the really irritating one ...

(I know I said I was going to bed, and I am, but my brain wouldn't let me go before I flipped through a couple books.)

The Santa Clara case as precedent, is the one that's bogus, imo. The Court issued a statement before arguments were even presented that indicated it did not wish to hear any arguments concerning whether the 14th amendment's equal protection clause applied to corporations because they were "all of the opinion it does." That's the primary predecent upon which the opinion asserted in the Beckwith case was based.

It's a bit like an historian citing himself as an authority on a subject when presenting an argument on a that subject.

[charlie]

36. Yes, it's remarkable, innit?

That such a flimsy legal justification eventually provided a foundation with the strength of an oak.

[icymist]

37. Do you mean that the decision in this case was bogus?

Go to sleep now, don't answer this. I'd rather have you awake. It's been a rather long night for me as well. Peace, friend. icymist

[RoyGBiv]

45. Not the decision itself ...

As punpriate explained, the decision was based in tax law, and that decision itself seems rather sound to my untrained eye. (I couldn't explain 19th century tax law if you put a gun to my head.) The bogus part is the pre-argument declaration by *one* justice that the Court was united in the opinion that the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause extended to corporations. At that time, this was not argued before the Court, not explained in a decision, not voted upon by any legislature, nothing. It was simply a statement that was placed into the record by the Court Clerk, leading to speculation about the Clerk's motives.

And then it was used as precedent for the Beckwith case.

It's also important to note that the creation of a principle of "corporate person-hood" was not accidental or merely the result of the Santa Clara case. The railroad companies, in particular, had been working toward this end for some time. Indeed, even though Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad lost its appeal against Beckwith, it didn't care. We're talking about a ludicrously small sum of money, $24 if I remember correctly. The entire point of the case was to establish corporate person-hood, and it did that.

Also interesting in an infuriating sort of way, at least one of the justices for whom Waite claimed to speak when making is pre-argument declaration in Santa Clara had earlier asserted in a written opinion previously that the 14th Amendment did *not* extend to corporations. The case of Munn v. Illinois in 1877, in fact, denied that corporations were protected from state law by that amendment. And, in 1882's San Mateo County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the court heard the corporate person-hood argument and did not address it at all.

The link provided in OneBlueSky's post points to an excellent article on this, btw.

[annabanana]

40. nominating because

More people ought to be aware of what we're up against....

[OneBlueSky]

41. "The Santa Clara Blues: Corporate Personhood versus Democracy"

http://www.iiipublishing.com/afd/santaclara.html

[Seabiscuit]

49. Can you please give a legal citation to the case you're speaking of?

[icymist]

51. I believe RoyGBiv gave a good summary in post #44.

eom

[icymist]

50. It seems that, with the Patriot Act, corporations are claiming more rights

more rights than human beings! They seem to be using these court cases, started by a bogus, if not treasonable, action by a clerk, to turn our Constitution into a device to protect corporations. At the same time, the Patriot Act takes away those very same rights from human beings. This is most likely what we're up against!

[icymist]

55. Thank you to all who contributed. I learned much here today.

:hi: