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Corporations Now Have a Right To "Personal Privacy"
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Thanks to a recent ruling (PDF) by the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, corporations now have a right to 'personal privacy,' due to the application of a carelessly worded definition in the Freedom of Information Act. FOIA exempts disclosure of certain records, but only if it 'could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.' But in its definitions, FOIA makes the mistake of broadly defining 'person' to include legal entities, like corporations. The FCC didn't think that 'personal privacy' could apply to a corporation, so they ignored AT&T's claim that releasing data from an investigation into how AT&T was overcharging certain customers would violate the corporation's privacy. The Third Circuit thought that the FCC's actions were contrary to what the law actually says. So now the FCC has to jump through more hoops to show that releasing data on their investigation into AT&T's overcharging is 'warranted' within the meaning of 5 USC 552(b)(7)(c) before it can release anything."
Can anyone with a legal background explain what part of corporate daily business requires that corporations be legally considered equivalent to people?
Entering into contracts and owning, buying and selling services and property.
In theory, yes. The Legislative branch writes laws with no hints towards how they should be interpreted. The Executive branch arrests people or otherwise enforces those laws based on its own interpretation. The Judicial branch reviews and decides if the Executive's actions are correct based on the wording of the law.
In practice, Judicial branch depends on prior decisions and sometimes other hints, as well as their own intelligence, when deciding what a law means.
It makes sense that only lawyers should write legislation, because they would be familiar with the legalese (jargon which is relatively specific compared to its usage in ordinary contexts). In practice, any joker good at winning popularity contests can write a law, summarize it to their fellow lawmakers, and have it pass without much in the way of reviews.
That's how bad laws get passed. That and a whole lot of other ways.
The commerce clause has been the subject of a number of lawsuits, so there is a lot of prior case law which has to be considered. We basically painted ourselves into a corner at this point, and I believe it would take a major challenge to change anything, much more than an individual citizen with a legitimate complaint.
So corporations get all the right of an individual, but with nothing but monetary penalties when they do something criminal like poison the ground water. The jerks responsible just close up shop and start a new corporation and rinse repeat.
No, this ruling does not go that far. This ruling does not say that corporations get the same "personal privacy" protection as individuals in all cases, only in the way that the government responds to FOIA requests. This is not a bad ruling, it is a good ruling on a badly written law. The results of this ruling are bad, but the law was clearly written to say this. It was probably not written this way on purpose, but I wouldn't bet on that. Considering that legislators often don't even read laws that they introduce, it is possible that some staffer introduced this wording for exactly this purpose.
However, I would expect that in this case the wording was introduced to serve some other purpose in the law (such as allowing corporations to file FOIA requests) without anybody noticing that it gave corporations unintended privacy protections.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Corporations are fined when they are caught breaking the law because, so far, that's all the courts can do. Please explain how anyone can "lockup" a corporation and I'll be the first support it. The whole idea of incorporating is to AVOID personal responsibility. If someone could hold the CEO, or anyone in the company, personally responsible for the actions of a corporation then the whole concept of a corporation becomes mostly useless.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
Go to http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2469/how-can-a-corporation-be-legally-considered-a-person and do a find on "court reporter"
Seriously. Can anyone with a legal background explain what part of corporate daily business requires that corporations be legally considered equivalent to people?
Because if Corporations didn't have First Amendment rights, Richard Nixon could have shut down the New York Times for publishing the Pentagon Papers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_States). Similarly, organizations like the ACLU, NOW, NARAL, NRL, NRA, ... (remember, most political advocacy organizations are incorporated) would be subject to restrictions on what they could say or publish in furtherance of their causes. The whole debate over the "7 deadly words" and FCC regulation of TV/radio would be a moot point if the corporations that hold those licenses had no legal right to any expression.
In the case of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_College_v._Woodward) the legislature of NH decided that they have the right to unilaterally rewrite the charter of Dartmouth college and appoint their own trustees to manage it. Again, if the corporation had right to a binding contract, there would be no impediment to the fairly naked power grab attempted there. The power grab was even more blatant in Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts v. Town of Pawlet (http://supreme.justia.com/us/29/480/), in which the Town basically tried to seize land from an unpopular missionary group on the grounds that corporations have no right to property. Again, if corporations have no right, their property could just be taken with no compensation.
IMO, the protection of the rights of corporations is little more than protection of the right of individuals when they want to accomplish something larger than they can do by themselves. If you and I wanted to start a nerdrage business on the internet (nevermind the lack of a serious way to make profits), we should be able to do so and retain the rights that we do as individuals. The fact that you and I are cooperating on the matter does not detract from the fact that we still have those rights.
I'm tempted to quote soylent green here -- Corporations are made of PEOPLE.
I'll bite on this one.... I think that you have a massively revisionist view of history, but even putting that aside go back and look at how much power corporations had before the 1800s. The founding fathers massively distrusted corporations due to their experience with the East India Company. The Boston Tea Party was as much a protest against the East India Company as it was the British Government (the East India Company was the proxy of the British Government in the colonies). They knew first hand the damage corporations could do and they believed the corporate charters should be handed out for limited periods of time with limited scope. We didn't have the immortal corporation in this country until the 19th century.
I don't necessarily advocate that we go back to the originally founding father's ideas about corporations, however I do think we need at the very least to think about revoking charters of corporations that are bad actors in society. I also think corporate person hood needs to removed from our society completely.
What freedoms does a flesh-and-blood person lose when they are incarcerated?
Well, they lose the freedom of freedom to move around -- you could simulate this with a corporation by forbidding them from moving their facilities or starting new ones, or preventing them from making changes to their business plans in areas related to the crime that got them incarcerated.
They lose the freedom to make decisions about what actions they can take -- make the corporation get approval from a neutral party (the corporation's "parole officer") for certain major decisions (hiring or firing executives or changing their compensation being the biggest ones.)
They lose (to some extent) the right to privacy -- give the parole office carte blanc access to the corporation's records and allow them to disseminate information pertinent to the corporation's punishment to the courts.
If a flesh-and-blood person has been found guilty of a serious enough crime, they can even lose the freedom to live and be executed -- to simulate this for a corporation, liquidate it and impose some restrictions on the heads of the corporation to prevent them from resurrecting it (easily.) For example, prohibit them from founding a new company for a certain period of time (or at least a new company in the same industry.) Although now that I think about it, if a corporation's done something so bad that it warrants the death penalty, I don't think that's going to be a big concern, as the executives have likely done something that is going to warrant some punishment themselves.
I remember reading a series of stories about this type of scenario, but I don't remember who the author was or where to find them again.
I think one problem here is, pretty much everyone when they hear 'corporation' thinks only about the super huge, worldwide conglomerates.
In reality, in the US, corporations are mostly small...remember the small businesses that employ most people in the US? For us, it is a great thing. In such a litigious society, a person needs some protection from all the sue happy people out there.
It is also about the only way to keep any of your hard earned dollars. There are a large number of people out there that incorporate for these reasons...many are like me, a single person corporation. But, doing this gives me protection from losing everything (direct liability, and ability to buy insurances), it gives me a way to write off the expenses of my business, etc. There are VERY good reasons if you are in business for yourself, that you should incorporate.
So, when reading and posting about the EVIL corporations, remember, that while big and powerful, they aren't the prevelant use of incorporation, most I'd dare say...are the Mom and Pops (and contractors like me) that serve and work with you directly in day to day life. And if you start tearing down the corporation to get at the big few, you will kill the small business, as that normal people with normal funds can't take that risk any longer.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You couldn't be more right except that by defining limited liability, you need to be aware that a corporation will not limit the liabilities of the actors involved with the activity that the liability stems from. In other words, you form a corporation and you work for it. If you wreck the company truck and kill a person, you are personally liable outside the liability of the corporation. The extent of the liability will only be limited by the law and any legal proceedings following your participation in the act.
The main benefit of a corporation is that non-participating actors (silent owners, share holders and so on who do not participate in running the corporation) are not obligated to other people's actions independent of their own actions outside the value of the investment. This is a necessary component of our business infrastructure otherwise a 2 billion dollar judgment on a company worth 500 million would result in all the share holder being responsible for the difference. Now think about that, you have 200 shares of company X in your retirement account at the advice of some brokerage firm and your house and property is being sold to satisfy some judgment from an action you have absolutely no control or influence over.
Or you could just have the 50 State governors meet together, propose the amendment, and then submit it to their state legislatures for ratification. You can bypass the Congress completely.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
A company is a group of people. Those people determine how the company is run. A company reflects its people not the other way around. A company's existence is dependent upon people joining it an performing functions. The people that perform those functions choose to do it in a certain manner. Trying to say that the 'company' socializes people into doing things is absurd. People social each other and then they create a company based off that socialization. A company can only survive in its current form as long as the people allow it. If the fictional "companies" determined the socialization we wouldn't have the changes in corporate structure and governance that are always occurring.
The common thread here is people and not companies, sorry. You can't build a castle out of mud.
This "nobility" has given us a military-industrial complex that has killed millions, a prison-industrial complex that has deprived millions of their freedom, a medical-industrial complex that leaves thousands to die because giving them the treatment they paid for isn't profitable enough, and an agriculture-industrial complex that produces poor quality food while destroying the land and the water.
I hope for a peaceful solution, but if a "reign of terror" is the only way to change that, I say, off with their heads already.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood