It's not surprising to learn that no nation on earth enshrines in its constitution the right of corporate personhood.
Mila Versteeg, associate law professor at the University of Virginia, is probably the only person in the world to have read every constitution that has been written since 1946 -- constitutions from 186 nations. She's not only read them, she's quantified them, in terms of the rights that they define. That was part of a project she did while at Oxford.
That led to the NY Times publishing an article, "'We The People' Loses Appeal With People Around the World" based partly on the work of her and her colleague, David Law, professor of Law at Washington University.
That NY Times article reported on the finding of Versteeg and Law that, while 30 or more years ago, the U.S. Constitution was highly regarded, things have changed. The Times article cited a journal article remark by Law and Versteeg, "Among the world's democracies," Professors Law and Versteeg concluded, "constitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone into free fall. Over the 1960s and 1970s, democratic constitutions as a whole became more similar to the U.S. Constitution, only to reverse course in the 1980s and 1990s."
That article inspired me to interview Law and Versteeg on my Bottom Up Radio show. They explained that the U.S. with the oldest constitution, probably has the hardest to change constitution in the world, suggesting that it has become fetishized, with constitutional fundamentalism based on "textualism" and "originalism" which Justices Scalia and Thomas both advocate.
They explained that, with a constitution so hard, perhaps impossible to revise, the way that adjustments are made is through the opinions and decisions of the Supreme Court, and how that body has become far more powerful than in the early days of the nation.
It was connivance by a former railroad company president, Bancroft Davis, who, changed jobs to become a Supreme Court Clerk who wrote a headnote that came to be viewed as the key verbiage that led to the setting of precedent on corporate personhood.
Since then, the U.S. has accepted that corporations have the same rights as persons as defined by the 14th amendment.
I asked professors Law and Versteeg, " Are there other nations where corporations are given similar rights to people?"
Professor Versteeg replied, "I'm probably the only person in the world who's read all the constitutions and I don't think it's something that's in the constitutions."
Next, I asked, " So, from what you know, having looked at 186 foreign constitutions, none of them offer corporate personhood rights."
Versteeg replied, " I"m pretty sure that none of them do and also, foreign constitutions tend to be more explicit. They can be 400 pages long and I haven't seen any of that and I'm pretty sure about it."
Professor Law added, "It is quite popular in other countries to have some kind of restriction in the constitution on property rights, how property can be used. Property rights have to be consistent with social welfare. You can't use property in such a way that it harms society. If you think of a corporation as a bundle of property rights, those specific clauses provide a basis for regulating corporations. You don't have that kind of a limitation in the U.S. constitution on property rights. There is more of a constitutional basis for regulation corporations than there is in this country."
Professors Law and Versteeg added the caveat that corporate personhood is not a right that is part of the U.S. constitution and that it could be, like in the U.S., something that a court in another nation added. But they also pointed out that most nations revise or replace their constitution, on the average, every 19 years. That means that supreme courts have much less influence on the laws of most nations.
Versteeg and Law also discussed how the U.S. constitution, so rigidly enshrined and "fetishized," has become treated in a Catholic way, like a "sacred document," not to be questioned.
Currently, there are a number of bills in various stages in Congress aimed at ending corporate personhood. Perhaps the sponsors would benefit from looking at the constitutions of other nations -- so language and law ideas on restricting corporate abuse of property, or corporate abuses period, might be adopted. Then again, in the U.S., the constitution has become a fossilized religious phenomenon that people are afraid to touch, handing the power to change laws over to the supreme court. If that is the reality, perhaps it is time the elected elements of the three parts of the balance of power in government take a hard look at just how important it is to change the constitution. Ironically, Thomas Jefferson literally suggested that the constitution should be re-written every 19 years. It's hard to imagine how he could have conceived of an idea that research statistics now support has become the exact average number of years that most nations go between revising their constitutions.
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It is therefore quite conceivable that Congress holds the constitutional authority to end corporate personhood by simply passing a law consistent with its own record of the Fourteenth Amendments deliberations. Ostensibly, this legislative action would practically overrule the Court error in enshrining an erroneous legislative construction by applying the true basis its Congress's intent for the Fourteenth Amendment.
"Which is the more serious problem with that chain of reasoning? That corporations are people, or that money is a form of speech? I’m uncomfortable with the urge to treat the Koch brothers as the focus of evil in the modern world, to steal a phrase from Ronald Reagan, but they could spend tons of their personal money spreading their poison and the issue of corporate personhood wouldn’t figure at all. Rich people have a long history in this country of buying elections and politicians. They didn’t, and still don’t, need the dodge of corporate personhood to do that nasty work.
Back to the economic argument. Critiques of corporate personhood tend to blur into critiques of bigness as an evil in itself. There is a great nostalgia for some kind of soft-focus version of the old days when enterprises were small and local. But there’s no way that small, local enterprises could make computers or high-speed rail equipment. Those things require both size and durability, things that the corporate form allows. Who’d buy complex, long-lasting equipment from a small firm that could die with its proprietor the day after tomorrow? How could such a firm design and build a train that does 350 mph while consuming minimal energy?"
And that raises another question: is the problem with corporate personhood the fundamental premise, or their lack of responsibilities under current law?
This reduces these Constitutions to little more than a gingerbread facade affixed to the faction in power at the time. It also effectively eliminates the Court System as a mechanism to secure Justice.
today you can incorporate on line at Legal Zoom.com so you can get new lines of credit after you've declared personal bankruptcy.
It is interesting, though, that other nations began turning away from our model at the very time modern conservatism was on the rise (1980s-1990s) showing once again that conservatism can contaminate and prostitute everything it touches.
Maybe it's me, I wrote a 224 page book without any word ending in ism, or the words "if" or "think."
Fetishized is Kall jargon for everything he doesn't get. He has Professors Law and Versteeg suggesting that our constitution has become "fetishized." they did not say anything of the kind.
Originalism is reading the words of the Constitution based on their meanings/intentions at the time of the writing. So the 2nd Amendment refers to the right to own any weapons that might commonly be used in militia work, i.e. automatic rifles, handguns, etc.
When sour grapes become so obvious and dishonest or disingenuous, they start to really reek. Yes I did make that one up.