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J Value Inquiry (2013) 47:319335
DOI 10.1007/s10790-013-9391-z
Kendy M. Hess
Published online: 17 August 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does. Santa Clara v. Southern Pacic1
Corporations are people, my friend! Mitt Romney2
Ill believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one.3 sign at Occupy Wall Street
There are two very important debates currently underway in both the philosophical literature and public discourse: the rst is about whether corporations are moral agents, and thus have moral obligations; the second is about whether corporations are persons, and thus entitled to a very specic suite of rights and protections. These conversations have occasionally been conated by critics of corporate moral agency
1 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacic Railroad, 118 US 394 (1886).
2 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made this unfortunate remark during a debate (Philip Rucker, Mitt Romney says corporations are people at Iowa State Fair, Washington Post, August 11, 2011). It is often taken out of context, but Romneys intended meaning is revealing. Romney opposed raising corporate taxes because Corporations are people, my friend Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Relying on the fact that corporations are made of people, Romney wants to conclude that whatever happens to the corporation happens to the people that harms to corporations harm members, etc. This is a modern version of the fallacy of composition. Romneys blithe equivalence between the corporation and its members is typical of much contemporary discussion; Scalia follows the same logic in the Citizens United concurrence discussed in Section 2. It is an unfortunate, dangerous, and prevalent error.
3 See http://createrealdemocracy.blogspot.com/2012/01/ill-believe-corporation-is-person-when.html
Web End =http://createrealdemocracy.blogspot.com/2012/01/ill-believe-corporation-is-person-when.html for a fascinating series of similar suggestions, most of which support the thesis of this article.
K. M. Hess (&)
College of the Holy Cross, One College Street, Box 98A, Worcester, MA 01610, USA e-mail: [email protected]
If You Tickle Us.: How Corporations Can Be Moral Agents Without Being Persons
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who argue (or assume) that recognizing corporations as moral agents requires us to recognize them as persons, that moral agency entails personhood.4 This...