Corporations aren’t addressed in the Constitution, so it doesn’t require that they be addressed by amendment. I don’t want the US Constitution to start looking like the Florida constitution with references to fishing nets and pregnant pigs.
There needs to be a trade off – if risk is reduced, something must be given up. This current system is adding power to reduced risk and putting competitors at a disadvantage.
If Al Capone had incorporated, he wouldn’t have gone to jail.
The Declaration of Independence wasn’t a corporate charter – those guys risked everything.
]]>As whig pointed out (or at least alluded to), there is an even earlier tradition in the history of American government of deep mistrust of corporations. Here is one article about the emergence of corporations in America, including some thoughts of Lincoln, Rutherford Hayes, T. Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower. I can’t find a ref to a compact exposition, but IIRC, our founders, having seen the British royal charters firsthand, were equally suspicious. If we had genuine conservatives on the Court instead of radicals with an agenda, they could easily look to that earlier tradition if they wished. (Well, perhaps not easily…)
I am very reluctant about constitutional amendments at this stage. We haven’t had any in a long time, and I don’t want to give the dominionists any ideas. Promoting any constitutional amendment in essence promotes the whole notion of amending the Constitution, and I can’t see any good coming of that in these parlous times.
]]>actually it would require throwing over about 100 years of pro-corporation decisons, and i’d be willing to bet that all the justices would be reluctant to bash the altar of stare decisis that much. i’m thinking another amendment is the only way to go.
]]>And now I get to think about scorpions and corporations and get all steamed up again…
]]>A corporation is more analogous to a royal charter.
]]>It doesn’t require a Constitutional amendment, it only requires a realistic interpretation, something we are not apt to get from the Synod.
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