Is a Corporation a person?

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This question is moot becuase legally it is the case, they have single entity in many countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_personality

However do you think this should be the case?

They have rights the people have, yet they are not citizens, and yet have rights that citizen don't have and lack the responsibilities of citizens.

They only exist by definition in each country, yet they can be above the countries they operate in.

I'm in favour of free agents, sole traders, and reformed company law with much reduced powers, increase personal responsibility and increased liability.

I would gladly let a Talos be a person before I let a soulless greedy entity like a corporation be a person.

Well technically incorporation is open to any group pf people, not just large corperations. However I'm against that too in the same way I'm against legal marriage.

However it fair to say that companies are not treated equally.

Real persons bleed and die. The notion of an artificial "legal person" is a mechanism for reducing liability in commerce. The German acronym for corporation is ghBh which means business will limited liability. There is no assertion of person-hood. The legal artificial person has lead to much mischief in American law...

My view is that we believe in the idea of no taxation without representation. If we're going to tax corporations, then the corporations need to have the ability to represent themselves. Ideally, we'd only tax the individuals making money off the corporations and make this moot.

Legally they are in a lot of ways, but I certainly don't agree with that...I think it gives the people in charge of them too much power and influence. For instance an organization having rights/freedoms/protections granted to people allows the CEO to sort of slime his way out of responsibility because he/she can hide behind the protections granted to that corporation, not to mention having too much political influence via being able to donate to campaigns just like a regular person and corporate lobbying to influence politicians decisions. I think corporations should have heavier regulations put on them than a regular citizen and not have the same legal protections.

I admit my terminology might not be 100%, as I haven't looked a whole lot at this issue and how exactly it works in depth but that is the general impression I have of why it's problematic for them to be treated as a legal person essentially.

That seems like a good idea actually.

I'll believe corporations are people when the state of Texas executes one.

We The People™ of the United States ®, in Order to form a more perfect Union (LLC), establish Justice Inc, insure domestic Tranquility GmbH...

So does Ltd and PLC, doesn't tell what the legal position is.

Here's an interesting documentary on the nature of the corporation :

A corporation is just a group of people organized to do business together, I'm not sure why the idea that their individual rights transfer through is so controversial to some people.

The lack of accountability, or liability and having rights that individuals lack. Individual rights are exactly that. There is no fundamental right to a legal entity.

It is not just a group of people doing business, it a legal definition that forms a an unhealthy relationship with government. A relationship which encourages a tendency towards protectionism.

They can also be brought before criminal courts and placed in prisons.


The original meaning of "limited liability" is that shareholders can't be held liable for the debts of a failed company. Their liability being limited to the value of their shareholding. Nothing to do with the company (or its executive) being protected from the consequences of their actions.

Because the personhood in question isn't the individual persons doing business, but the non-sentient entity that they just happen to comprise. The CEO of Google has the rights of a person, because he clearly is one, but the company he heads up is nothing more than just a thing. If you have no trouble with corporations being persons, how about labor unions?

A corporation is not a person. It is a separate legal entity. The main reason for this is so that individual shareholders are not personally responsible for the liabilities of or other actions of the corporation, other than the amount of money that they have invested in the corporation.