Thread: Supreme Court declares corporations are people

What's scarier is the fact that a corporation can't be tried as a person.

There's the lovely part of 'The Corporation' where they compare some multinationals to psychopaths. It sounds outlandish, but they explain it very well.

At this point, if the coverage isn't hyperbole, what's to stop the president from being 'brought to you by Walmart' ? Cynics will say that's already pretty much the case, but I don't think it is to the extent that it could be after this.

Multinationals as psychopaths doesn't sound outlandish at all, actually. Manipulative, charming, with no empathy or conscience? Defines multinationals to a T.

It is pretty scary that now men such as the Murdoch family will be able to overtly buy or destroy a presidency. Before they had to at least pretend that that's not what they do.

And can you think what it'll do to laws? No union protections, no minimum wage protections, no worker protections at all.. FDA regulations down the shitter..

Right. There's some more interesting stuff here:

The Problem:
Corporate irresponsibility, caused by asymmetric interpretation of corporations as persons, for purposes of capturing profits, but not for purposes of criminal liability.

The Social Invention:
Corporations are given legal rights, as if they were actual people, but currently, criminal law applies only to real people. For example, corporations cannot be tried for murder, they can only be sued for wrongful death. Likewise, a person convicted of mail fraud might go to jail, but a corporation committing mail fraud cannot be tried for the crime, and is only liable for civil damages to individual victims.

The history of the legal construct of the corporation is one of shifting definitions and public expectations. Over the centuries, corporations have crept from being cautiously chartered with limited life-span and public interest oversight, to being automatically granted charter and allowed secretive operations and immortality. In U.S. courts, corporate entities - as distinct from their owners, directors, and employees - are afforded many of the rights of living human beings.

Global : Ideas : Bank - Prison for criminal corporations

Judicial activism. It's funny how those on the right whine, bitch and moan about liberal judicial activism. Yet here we have the supreme court led by the conservatives that have collectively said 'up yours' to every American citizen.

However I will say this - the decision has pissed off most Americans. The only ones that are actually happy with it are either the fringe elements on the right and the republicans in congress.