{"id":65,"date":"2023-08-03T10:06:13","date_gmt":"2023-08-03T14:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/cebe\/chapter\/__unknown__-12\/"},"modified":"2023-08-22T12:13:04","modified_gmt":"2023-08-22T16:13:04","slug":"corporate-personhood","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/cebe\/chapter\/corporate-personhood\/","title":{"raw":"Corporate Personhood","rendered":"Corporate Personhood"},"content":{"raw":"

Corporate personhood<\/strong> is the ethical and legal concept according to which corporations may be treated \u2014 morally or legally \u2014 as entities independent of the human beings\u00a0associated with them. In particular, this means that corporations have certain rights (such as the right to own property) and can be held accountable for their actions. It is a concept recognized within the legal systems of all advanced economies, because without corporate personhood, there simply can be no corporations.<\/p>\r\nThe notion that corporations are persons has sometimes been controversial. Some critics have worried that thinking of corporations as persons gives them too much power, or accords them too much dignity. Such critics often take \u201cpersons\u201d to mean the same as \u201cpeople,\u201d which then leads to the worry that corporations might be thought of as being owed the same moral respect human beings are owed. Others have worried the notion of corporate personhood obscures the responsibility of individual humans within the corporation. Such critics argue that when we say that a corporation \u201cdid\u201d something, this is just a shorthand way of saying that certain people \u2014 real human beings\u00a0\u2014 did certain things, and it is those human beings who deserve credit or blame.\r\n

From an ethical point of view, corporate personhood is grounded in the idea\u00a0that corporations seem to have many of the fundamental characteristics that let us identify persons. Like human persons, corporations have goals, and take action\u2014based on their beliefs\u2014in pursuit of those goals. If corporations are the sorts of things that can take action, they can rightly be blamed or praised for those actions, just like any human being can.<\/p>\r\n

Legally, personhood means that corporations are regarded by courts as being responsible for their own actions. They can make commitments, and can be held responsible for those commitments. They can thus, for example, sign contracts and own property. They can sue, and be sued. From a legal point of view, legal personhood is what makes it possible for a consumer to ask that a warranty be honoured, even if the person who made or sold the product to them no longer works there. It is also what makes it possible for a government to sue a corporation for damage caused by an oil spill. Personhood is often referred to as a \u201clegal fiction.\u201d This description is not meant as a criticism, or as a way of diminishing the importance of legal personhood. It is simply a reflection of the fact that personhood is a legal convention, a way for courts to behave with regard to corporations, rather than a description of their nature.<\/p>\r\n

It is worth noting that while the term \u201ccorporations\u201d is most often taken to refer to for-profit corporations, in reality it applies to all sorts of organizations that are legally incorporated, including nonprofits (such as Greenpeace), labour unions, churches, universities, and so on. This means that the notion of corporate personhood applies to them too.<\/p>\r\nSee also in CEBE:<\/strong>\r\n