Why a Corporation cannot be a “Person” in the meaning of the U.S. Constitution

[This proof was discovered in 2011. The narration of the proof * was revised here in February 2019.]

The Constitution starts with “We the People… establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”  Then the first sentence of Article I Section 2 and the first sentence of the 17th Amendment state that Representatives and Senators shall be “chosen” and “elected” “by the People” of “each state”.  Those sentences – which include the only two sentences in all seven original Articles of the Constitution where the word “People” is used – establish the revolutionary principle that this shall be a government that is by and for “the People”.  The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were truly pioneering, establishing “the people” as the sovereign power in government.  The word “person[s]”, however, appears 49 times in the Constitution, as amended.  “Persons” would no longer be serfs, with lives subject to the whims of an aristocracy, but were “created equal … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”, struggling to establish a new type of government intended “to secure these rights”. The Constitutional meaning of the word “person” (and its plural form “people”) is critical to us, since the Constitution lists extremely important rights that belong to us.

Declaration of Independence from Corporate Rule

The United States government was established as a democratic republic by an armed revolution against a monarchy, its enabling and privileged aristocracy, and their powerful, far-reaching chartered companies.  It was founded as a national government, which promised that “the people” are sovereign and that each “person” possesses equal, inherent, unalienable rights. Our rights, and the rule of the people over things, which are properly in our jurisdiction, including our own government, are exercised within parameters that are described by the Constitution.  It was far from perfect, but it was a great and important step in the right direction. 

The Ultimate Universal Invasive Species is Bound for Planet “B”

[first posted on Groundhog Day, 2016; revised on Earth Day, 2018]

Human beings are now facing the greatest challenge that we have ever faced.  The incessant, increasing activity of modern times is rapidly depleting and despoiling existing ‘natural resources’, and destroying the ability of this beautiful planet to sustain life.  The never satiated enterprises and the profligate ways of what we call civilization are feverishly and rapidly reversing ancient processes, which transformed a bleak and barren planet into our verdant, multi-cellular-organism sustaining Earth. Global warming appears foremost in immediacy among those man-made process reversals, which threaten life itself.  Can we yet stop and reverse the rush to ruin?  We need to learn quickly what is keeping us from working together to protect the ability of this planet to continue to sustain life as we know it.

Proof that a Corporation is NOT a “Person” in the meaning of the U.S. Constitution

Our U.S. Constitution begins with the sentence, “We the People … do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America”.  The first sentence of Article I Section 2, and the first sentence of the 17th Amendment mandate that our Representatives and Senators shall be “chosen” and “elected” “by the People” of “each state”.  Those three sentences establish that our government is to be by and for “the people”.  They include the only two sentences in all seven original Articles in which the word “People” even appears.  The word “person(s)” appears 49 times in today’s Constitution.  The Constitutional meaning of those words is of critical importance to us, since the U.S. Constitution (as ratified and amended) explicitly outlines inherent rights possessed by all individual “Persons”, who, taken as a whole, constitute “the People”.  ( See: Headnote* and Footnote **** below.)

The first two sentences of the third paragraph of Article I Section 2 explicitly assign to the Congress the authority and the responsibility to identify all “Persons … in such Manner as they shall, by Law direct”, and to enumerate them (as per a Constitutional formula).   This identification and enumeration is needed in order to allocate a number of “Representatives” proportional to the “Number” of “Persons” in each state, who are then elected by “the Electors in each State”.  So, to determine ‘What is and what is not a Constitutional “person”?’ we must discern (a) ‘How does the U.S. Constitution itself use the word “person”?’ and (b) ‘How has the U.S. Congress defined a “person”, in complying with its Constitutional duty in paragraph 3 of Article I Section 2, and later, with Section 2 of the 14th Amendment?’

The Universal Invasive Species is bound for Planet “B”

From his brimstone bed at break of day
A walking the Devil is gone,
To visit his snug little farm the earth,
And see how his stock goes on.

Samuel Coleridge

[First published on Groundhog Day, 2016, this significant revision was posted in January 2017]

About a billion years or so from now, changes in the sun’s energy output will end the ability of the now 4.5 billion year old Planet Earth to support life. We don’t yet know how or if we can deal with that far-into-the-distant-future problem. But today we are facing an imminent threat to life on Earth and we’d better not put it off. The incessant, increasing activities of human civilization are rapidly depleting and despoiling existing ‘natural resources’, and are simultaneously accelerating the degradation of the ability of this beautiful planet to sustain life. These unprecedented changes include widespread continuing destruction of natural life and ecology; damaging alterations of the planet’s oceans, surface and ground water; and the ominous increase of human produced toxins and global warming “greenhouse” gases in the atmosphere. Despite that, human beings are not the universal invasive species, and we can stop and repair the damage.

Dispelling the mystique of U.S. supreme Court Judges

The following essay was written and completed in the days preceding the sudden unexpected death of Judge Antonin Scalia.  So I dedicate this essay (and another one, previously composed) to his outrageous memory.  Judge Scalia described himself as a “textualist” – one who believes that “[it] is the law that governs, not the intent of the lawgiver”.  Judge O.W. Holmes described textualists as those who say, “We do not inquire what the legislature meant, we ask only what the statutes mean.”  With respect for the scholarship of Judge Scalia, I submit the following accidentally timely essay, and one other directly relevant, certainly more important essay, each of which catch me employing truly “textualist” argument, such as was professed by Judge Scalia.  (Scalia himself clarified that “textualism should not be confused with so-called strict constructionism, which brings the whole philosophy into disrepute. I am not a strict constructionist, and no one ought to be.”)  Read it only if you can appreciate the irony of someone like me honoring the spirit of Antonin Scalia.  Both of them are direct, concise, easy reading. And the one that follows, below, is also light-hearted.

How a professional Ignores and Denies the Truth

You don’t have to be a rabid strict constructionist; you don’t have to believe that the wealthy, slave-owning, colonial “founding fathers” were invariably righteous and wise; you don’t have to believe that each word of the Constitution is sacrosanct and infallible; in order to be able to credibly refer to the actual text of the U.S. Constitution, and thus shed useful light on a question of Constitutional law that is terribly important to all of us.

The U.S. Constitution Itself Proves that a Corporation is NOT a Person!

This proof was discovered and published in 2011, and was last revised in March, 2017. Each of the five bullet points below contains a specific Constitutional reference and quotation. The arguments which follow the quoted text in each section stand alone, but they all mutually reinforce the contention made in the title of this essay. And the arguments help to give meaning to this question regarding a legal technicality that keeps on crippling and stealing our rights, and keeps on killing us, and is getting worse. In this matter, we the people persist in contending that the emperor and his lackeys are parading – without a stitch of clothing. So if the shoe fits wear it. But if it’s a good tool, put it to good use.

Destroying the Movement in Order to Save It?

LEADERSHIP, DISCIPLINE, AND DEMOCRACY IN OUR MOVEMENT

Some leaders of Wisconsin Move to Amend have just publicly announced that they are dis-affiliating from the national Move to Amend organization, and they are forming a new organization which they are calling “United to Amend”. The reasons for this action are not clear to me, and the reasons that I have been given are, on their face, not sufficient to fragment this so important, strong and growing non-partisan, truly grassroots Movement, which has such widespread public support.

Dissecting “Corporate Personhood”

The core principle of our Movement to Amend is not to end “corporate personhood” – it is to end corporate Constitutional rights!

“Corporate personhood” is legal-jargon. The phrase itself is a jarring counter-intuitive oxymoron. We all know that a corporation is not a person! For that reason alone, it’s easy for people to disdain that phrase without even thinking about it. But what does it actually mean? Or maybe the question should be, what do WE actually mean?

Do Corporations Have Constitutional Rights? The Proof.

Is there truth in the legal theory that a corporation possesses the unalienable rights of a person, which are explicitly protected by the Constitution of the United States? Does the Constitution confer the rights of a “person”, or of “the people”, upon artificial legal entities we now know as “corporations”? What exactly does the U.S. Constitution consider to be a “person”? If corporations possess the Constitutional rights of a “person”, then corporate power rules our lives and our future. If, on the other hand, the people are sovereign in our government, and only the people have Constitutional rights, then we the people, in compliance with our Constitution, have full legal authority to determine the rules and the policies that organize and shape our lives.

Declaration of Independence from Corporate Rule

On the historic occasion of Independence Day and Juneteenth, 2014, with honor and deep respect for the U.S. Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, the Abolition of Slavery, the Equal Rights of all Persons, and the Planet of our birth which has nurtured life and beauty for so long, here is submitted a statement of truth bearing importantly on the evolution and development of government that is of, by, and for the people. May we today be equal to the great task now before us of ensuring that that government shall not perish from the earth. And may we also, and thereby, become equal to what is likely the most dangerous challenge that humankind has ever faced thus far during our entire existence on Earth – a challenge that we ourselves have created, through technology and civilization – the consequences of our own cleverness and industry.

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT to end legalized bribery and to protect the rights of the people

A proposed Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1) to establish that a corporation is not a person, in the meaning of the Constitution, and (2) to establish that money is not equivalent to Constitutionally protected speech, and (3) to protect the sovereignty and the unalienable rights of the people under this Constitution.

Does a Corporation have Constitutional Rights? (Part 2 of 2) A Corporation does NOT count as a Person, under the U.S. Constitution

One of the two key citations in the Constitution bearing on whether a corporation is a ‘person’ under the Constitution is the 14th Amendment, which contains four sentences employing the word “person[s]” – (the two sentences that constitute section 1, and the opening sentences in each of sections 2 and 3).  The 14th Amendment was cited in the preface to an 1886 Supreme Court case. This preface was later exploited to massively rewrite corporate law using the unjustifiable legal theory that a corporation is a Constitutional ‘person’.

Does a Corporation have Constitutional Rights? (Part 1 of 2) A Corporation is a Party, not a Person, under the U.S. Constitution

Is there any truth in the legal theory that a corporation possesses, by authority of the U.S. Constitution, any of the inherent, unalienable rights of a person?

Corporations v. Persons – the struggle that will define the 21st Century

Have you ever wondered what possessed members of the supreme Court to determine that a corporation is a “person”, according to the Constitution? Which passages in the U.S. Constitution (including Amendments) could certain supreme Court Judges have construed to support their determination (in contrast to common understanding and general usage) that a corporation possesses the rights that are explicitly defined for a “person” in the Constitution? Having researched and written about the consequences of this determination several times over the last decade, I became interested and finally compelled to get to this root of the problem. And so I once again studied the Constitution and its Amendments. But this time, I searched in particular for an answer to the question of how in the world anyone can conclude that a corporation possesses the specific Constitutional rights that are described there as belonging to a “person”.

I began by locating and highlighting certain words in the text (such as “corporation”, “company”, “person[s]”, “citizen[s]”, and “people”). Then I studied the context in which those words appear. My search was productive, with results that were startling, informative, and actually simple to comprehend and to share with you.  https://clydewinter.wordpress.com/2015/11/19/666-word-proof-that-a-corporation-is-not-a-person/

The Difference Between a “Person” and a “Party”

My ol’ huntin’ partners, Sid D. Complex and Jesse B. Simple, and I were enjoying a couple beers together this Spring. Jess had just boggled my mind with one of his astute observations on the human condition. So I was trying to appear calm, and in full possession of my faculties while feeling more than usually uncertain and unbalanced.

Sid handled the silence that followed by deftly changing the subject. ‘Know what?’ inquired Sid. ‘The word “Person(s)” appears in the U.S. Constitution 22 times. And that same word pops up 27 times in the Constitutional Amendments (which averages once per Amendment). I know because I counted. But, the word “corporation(s)” doesn’t appear even once in the U.S. Constitution or in any Amendment. What the hell is all this noise about the Supreme Court declaring that a corporation is a person? That’s just plain nuts. A corporation doesn’t bleed, it can’t have kids, a corporation ain’t a person, anybody knows that.’

Smart-as-a-whip Jess came right back, without even pausing to take a deep breath or whet his whistle.