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Tweet The Supreme Court, in “Citizens United (against the citizens)” said, as Gov. Romney put it “Corporations are people, my friend.”
The people at “Occupy Wall Street” say, “I’ll agree that ‘Corporations are people’ when the government executes one.”
and “If a Corporation is a person then why isn’t it murder to declare bankruptcy? ”
A lawyer I consulted rationalizes the notion that “Corporations are people” by arguing that corporations have the rights to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure, as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment, in the Bill of Rights, ratified 15, December, 1791.
However, it is the people who own the corporation and the people who work in the corporation who have the right, guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment, to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure – not the corporation.
The corporation can not exist without owners. A corporation is a piece of property, like a car, a house, a gun, etc. These objects have no rights. When an accused shooter goes on trial, it is the person who allegedly squeezed the trigger, or the person who paid for the “hit.” It is not the weapon. As the National Rifle Association might say, “Guns don’t kill people, people use guns to kill people.”
While people can own one or more corporations, in whole or in part, people may not own other people. This, i.e. slavery, described by Barack Obama as the “Original sin of America,” was claimed under the rubric of “States Rights” referenced in the “Declaration of Causes of Seceding States” on 24, December, 1860. However, it was voided by the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified on 6, December, 1865 and the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified on 9, July, 1868.
Additional counter-arguments can be found in Marjorie Kelly’s “The Divine Right of Capital” (ISBN 1576752372).
Relevent text from the Declaration of Causes of Seceding States and the Constitution of the United States are below.
Declaration of Causes of Seceding States
“An increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations” to enforce “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”
Fourth Amendment
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Thirteenth Amendment
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Fourteenth Amendment
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.