Comments on: A Puzzlement

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:43:03 +0000

I suppose that’s what one of my teachers meant when she said, “Don’t all speak at once!”

The notion of corporate personhood is suspect, if not outright bogus. Can the corporation engage in speech? No, its board can determine that some speech is to the financial advantage of the stockholders (or some analogous concept for nonprofits), and direct employees to engage in speech on its behalf. Another difference is that a corporation, unless it commits major illegal activity, cannot die.

And let’s face it: the phrase “sense-of-the-Senate resolution” is an oxymoron.

So we have one nonentity (“sense-of-the-Senate resolution”) in conflict with another nonentity (“corporate personhood”). Somebody please construct a riddle about the outcome.

I also see a commercial opportunity here, which I hereby place into the public domain. Considering that men’s and women’s business attire usually involves jackets lacking suitable head and neck protection against cold weather, someone should manufacture and market… wait for it…

a Corporate Person Hood.

Oh, wait, there may be a problem with prior art…

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:11:15 +0000

Here’s the thing: when an individual in Congress condemns something they are exercising their right of free speech. If they do it on the floor, it’s “freer speech” because they are immune from a defamation suit. I’ve got no problem with that.

When Congress votes and condemns something, they aren’t rendering a personal opinion, they are stating a government policy. That brings the weight of the government against the individual, and there is no way the individual can respond.

There has never actually been a court decision that explicitly stated corporate personhood. This fiction is based on a tax case and the question of personhood was not an issue in deciding the case, only in the standing to bring the case. It wasn’t even challenged at the time of the case, and was included as a passing remark by one of the judges involved, not as part of the written opinion.

By: whig

whig — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:01:09 +0000

Corporations shouldn’t have free speech but people do, and can say whatever they want. Nothing prevents an organization like MoveOn from paying for an ad, nor prohibits someone from expressing the same content as their own speech.

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 06:08:36 +0000

a ticklish little problem. believers in corporate personhood say that without it, organizations like moveon would not have the right to place such an ad, not as free speech, anyway [protects the newspapers' free speech too]. corporate personhood has certainly been used to steamroller those of us who are real and individual persons, so by striking out at the corporation that bought the ad, congress is tangentially striking a blow for the rights of real and individual persons over those of fake persons. otoh, congress is mostly composed of mindless blithering warmongering hypocritical and hypercritical idiots who care naught for the rights of ordinary people, nor do they care one whit about the troops they're supporting by passing these resolutions.

By: whig

whig — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 04:17:06 +0000

It was certainly in poor taste and bad strategy.

By: whig

whig — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 04:16:33 +0000

I don’t think, quite. It was a nonbinding resolution expressing the opinion of the body, which is arguably under Congress’s first amendment rights as well to speak.