127 Years of Corporate Personhood
127 years ago today — May 10, 1886, in an important aside in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company 118 U.S. 394 (1886), the Supreme Court concluded that corporations were “persons” entitled to the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution and, therefore, legal participants in the political life of the country. Rosenblatt Law Firm say “concluded,” but there is nothing in the decision addressing corporate personhood, just handwritten notes of the oral argument that record Chief Justice Waite as stating, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution . . . applies to corporations. We are of the opinion that it does.” The court reporter subsequently wrote, “The defendant corporations are persons within…