That doesn't work. That would mean a corporation has an obligation to pay its employees, but not a right to sue someone who refuses to pay for a good or service, or the ability to own things.

I think you’re creating a strawman here. Is there actually a Bible passage that calls God “infinitely old” or an “infinity of infinities”?

Regardless, Christian theology is very diverse. There’s a wide range of ideas on the nature of God.

I have my own issues with mainstream Christian theology, but I’d try and study up on it before dismissing it all out of hand. Any objection you can think of, the theologians have studied and responded to ad nauseam.

Arguably, you're not wrong, if by "respect" you mean how someone is treated.

If you expect to engage in transactional relationships with people to further your own ends, will obey explicitly agreed-upon rules but have no implicit ones, and have no particular concerns for the persons' wellbeing beyond those, you will treat humans and corporations the same.

Our system is not designed the way you think it should be. There's some variability between different countries, but for the most part every nation adheres to the principles I've outlined. At this point, all I can do is tell you to go to law school or audit torts and corporations so you can raise these points with subject matter experts.

> or at least it was until Citizens United...

Citizens United had nothing to do with corporate personhood. The decision was based on the idea that if a group of people pool their money they shouldn't suddenly lose their right to free speech. And the decision didn't even cover all corporations, just unions and non-profits that were strictly political in nature.

Corporations can be dissolved under certain circumstances, that's effectively what happened to Arthur Anderson after the Enron scandal. 13A bans slavery and involuntary servitude, and 14th amendment applies to persons born or naturalized in the USA, neither of which restricts the ability to own a corporation. Moreover, one doesn't "own" a corporation, but rather one owns shares in the corporation. Corporate personhood is a legal fiction, or at least it was until Citizens United...

If we support tolerance, shouldn’t we condemn intolerance and seek to suppress it?

Whoever made the decision to sell the product before it was ready.

No one in the line making the product is responsible, no one inventing or selling is responsible... we don't have a system where they're the ones bringing it to market.

CEO's get the big bucks, why do they get protections for not doing their job?

Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 481 (1819) arguably marks the beginning of the shift in sentiment. In colonial America, corporate charters were often time limited and required renewal, but the Dartmouth case essentially recognized the possibility that a corporation could be structured to exist in continuity and that subsequent governments could be limited in their ability to revoke a charter unless the original charter said they could. I'm pretty sure "permanent corporations" were not unusual by the late 19th century, but this isn't my area of expertise.

>I would destroy the worm because I had to, but I would make a charitable donation in its honor. And someday hopefully make a world where worms and people can live in harmony.

Is this...is this a joke?

A charitable donation in a parasite's honor? Just, why? Which entity would you donate to? Are there organizations that specifically protect parasitic species?

This has to be a joke, right?

My view as an animal rights litigator who was one of the attorneys behind a federal judge declaring Colombian hippopotamuses to be legal “persons” for the limited purpose of being able to apply for a subpoena in the United States:

The word “person” has many different understandings depending on the context, and this is the source of much confusion.

The common usage of the word “person” equates being a person with being a human. And people starting with that common understanding will naturally tend to think that being a “legal person” means having the same (or similar) legal rights as a human.

The problem with that definition of a legal person though is that even between humans legal rights and duties vary dramatically. Compare the legal rights that a U.S. court would give a non-citizen infant who is located in another country (the right to travel here maybe, the right to apply for asylum maybe) with the legal rights that U.S. court would recognize for an adult who is a citizen. And even between adults who are citizens, some may not be able to drive if they can’t pass a driver’s test, and some may even be sujbect to getting killed by the government if they were found guilty of murder in some jurisdictions in the U.S. Consider further the differences between legal rights of humans in the U.S. based on age, incarceration status, what state they live in, and whether they are currently elected to public office in the government with the right to vote on or sign legislation into law for example.

Additionally, this view of legal personhood as being roughly the same as having the same legal rights as a human does not make sense as-applied to corporations. Corporations can be bought, sold, and owned. Corporations can be terminated by a vote of the board, or by a state’s Secretary of State for failing to comply with proper paperwork like renewing registration every year. At the same time, it is useful for corporations to have some legal rights and duties. A corporation can enter into a contract to take out a loan or construct a new office building, and it makes more sense for the corporation to do that than for one of its employees to have to personally apply for a loan or personally sign a contract to build a new office building. It is also useful to be able to sue corporations when they do things like rip us off or hurt us illegally. Where we get into trouble is actually when we conflate corporate personhood with human personhood and give them the right to donate money for political speech and the right to freedom of religion that arguably should only go to individual humans and not to corporate entities.

So what is legal personhood and when should it be recognized? I contend that legal personhood just means that a court recognizes that you have some legal right(s) and/or obligation(s) that can be enforced in court. Essentially, that you have a legal “personality” and the ability to be a litigant in a lawsuit. So really the key questions are whether the law recognizes that a given entity has some legal interest that must (or should) be recognized by courts.

By that definition, I’d argue that animals already are legal persons, albeit in a very weak sense. Animal cruelty laws exist in all fifty states to protect animals from unjustified neglect and abuse. That is clearly a legal interest and legal right that animals possess in my view. Therefore, courts should recognize that animals have legal interests and legal standing to be litigants in legal proceedings relating to enforcement of laws intended to protect animals. We should be asking courts to do that, courts should be recognizing that animals have legal rights and legal personality, and to the extent courts fail to do this legislatures should step in and correct courts.

ETA: Under that framework, the question of legal personhood at least is really an empirical question about whether the entity in question has legal interests that can be the subject of legal proceedings. There is a slight normative dimension to the question as well though to the extent that the issue has not been unequivocally decided in a jurisdiction a judge will have to ask “should or does the law recognize that this entity is a legal person for purposes of this dispute?” That kind of brings us into the territory of asking what is the nature of law: is it judges somewhat just making stuff up as they go (legal realism / more normative) or is it judges dutifully applying the law to the situation at hand (legal positivism / more empirical). But that’s a whole other discussion.

As with most legal questions, the correct answer is "it depends."

For certain purposes, the federal government is a person: U.S. v. The Cooper Corp., (1941).

In some contexts, city/county governments are, but state or federal governments are not because they are sovereigns. Cook County v. U.S. ex rel Chandler, (2003). This actually makes sense because most municipalities are "incorporated" in the sense that they're creatures of state law.

It's more like a contract or ruleset. I've found this article enlightening.

> The inventor, the manufacturer, or the salesman?

Even more importantly, let's say it's the manufacturer. The problem occurred because a software test fail was not noticed. Who's fault is it then? The developer who wrote the bug? What about the people who did the code review? Maybe the tester who didn't bring it up after the fact? etc. etc. etc.

Recognizing my personal obligations towards a person on the basis of some connection we have is one thing. But it's a different thing entirely from assigning moral value to that person. All persons have the same basic moral value which is entirely independent from how I may or may not be connected to them.

Cmon, the world doesn't revolve around you or me. We cannot base moral theory or law on such navel gazing tactics!

If corporations are people is the government a person?

Only some homo sapiens. And certainly not all the homo sapiens we would want to include under the category of persons. So the definition of a person needs to be a different one.

How long have corporations been a concept and how did it start? I read that up until the early 1900s incorporation was something granted to businesses as a temporary status to product them in special circumstances and that businesses were never supposed to be corporations permanently.

Can you murder a corporation? Can a corporation be put in prison or executed? Why can they be sold or owned by individuals if they have personhood?

Laws and stuff are different, isn't this article just using a debate about laws to talk about some basic philosophy or the like.

So easy!

Let bacteria proliferate, don’t vaccinate, leave the tumours, and stop cleaning and eradicating 99% of all germs!

You’re being speciesist if you don’t guarantee omicron more hosts!

do you mean the people protesting a guy who was killed by the cops? if they started the violence then how did the guy die??

Easier said than done. Who pays for the medical care of people injured by a defective product? The inventor, the manufacturer, or the salesman? Maybe all of them? Maybe someone else? If it's one or more individual, there probably won't be enough money to give all the victims the medical care they need and deserve.

The (main) point of a corporation is to consolidate the risks in one entity, the one who paid those people's salaries and directly profited from the product. In some situations the individuals can be personally responsible too, but that's generally very difficult to establish under the law.

Clearly corporations are people and deserve the same respect as humans.

If you are equating people minding their own business trying to pee with LibsofTiktok, you're so barking up wrong tree right now. Dems are absolutely right wing. I'm from another country, it's laughable when they claim that Joe Biden - a corporate Democrat to the bone - is a socialist.