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Sooooooooo, since corporations are people...

SuperHoosierFan

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Aug 1, 2003
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Do we lock up the whole building that houses the headquarters of Chase and City Group? Do we lock up the actual human beings who committed these crimes? Or are corporations only people when it comes to getting the benefits that human beings get and not when It comes to the consequences?

To quote John Boehner "who's going to jail?"

Answer: No one

If you commit a crime that benefits a corporation, it's all good. Just pay a little (proportionately) fine and go on with your day. I have no doubt this fine amounts to a drop in the bucket compared to what they made with currency manipulation.

Republicans won't say it to your face, but this is what they mean by the "free market". They are "free" to commit crimes and they will always remain "free".
 
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Do we lock up the whole building that houses the headquarters of Chase and CityCorp? Do we lock up the actual human beings who committed these crimes? Or are corporations only people when it comes to getting the benefits that human beings get and not when It comes to the consequences?

To quote John Boehner "who's going to jail?"

Answer: No one

If you commit a crime that benefits a corporation, it's all good. Just pay a little (proportionately) fine and go on with your day. I have no doubt this fine amounts to a drop in the bucket compared to what they made with currency manipulation.

Republicans won't say it to your face, but this is what they mean by the "free market". They are "free" to commit crimes and they will always remain "free".
Do you talk to dead people?

If so, Ken Lay can help you with this. If he is still around, talk to Jeff Skilling too.
 
One of the purposes of corporations is to limit personal liability. In my mind, this is one of the many reasons the Supremes erred in giving "personhood" to corporations. Nevertheless, there are exceptions to these limitations. One of these exceptions being when someone is injured.

The problem with discovering and proving that individuals within a large corporation injured someone, or many, is very difficult. The injury maybe evident, but when the fault is a collective effort without any provable intent to harm then finding people guilty is tough.
 
One of the purposes of corporations is to limit personal liability. In my mind, this is one of the many reasons the Supremes erred in giving "personhood" to corporations.

The recognition of corporate personhood goes way, way back in American law. In fact, the first time it was recognized was in the Marshall court.

1 U.S. Code § 1 reads (in part):

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise.....the words “person” and “whoever” include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;
It always puzzles me when people point to recent court decisions (most notably, of course, Citizens United and Hobby Lobby) as some kind of radical lurch in the law -- so far as corporate rights go. I'm not sure you're doing this here. Maybe you're referring to the Supremes of Marshall's era -- or various courts since then which have reaffirmed or relied upon corporate personhood. But, still, many treat it as some kind of novel concept.

The open question isn't whether or not corporate entities enjoy some of the same of rights/privileges as individuals, but which ones, in what form, with what limitations, etc.
 
The recognition of corporate personhood goes way, way back in American law. In fact, the first time it was recognized was in the Marshall court.

1 U.S. Code § 1 reads (in part):

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise.....the words “person” and “whoever” include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;
It always puzzles me when people point to recent court decisions (most notably, of course, Citizens United and Hobby Lobby) as some kind of radical lurch in the law -- so far as corporate rights go. I'm not sure you're doing this here. Maybe you're referring to the Supremes of Marshall's era -- or various courts since then which have reaffirmed or relied upon corporate personhood. But, still, many treat it as some kind of novel concept.

The open question isn't whether or not corporate entities enjoy some of the same of rights/privileges as individuals, but which ones, in what form, with what limitations, etc.
This is a good point. And several natural and constitutional rights - like the right to contract - have long been granted to corporations by the Court.

The real question with cases like Citizens United (which the Court got right) and Hobby Lobby (which the Court got wrong*), I think is this: Is the right in question one which it is possible for a corporation to enjoy? To me, it's clear that corporations can enjoy free speech; it's not clear corporations can enjoy religion.

* I'll note the possibility that the Court got Hobby Lobby right, as well (as a matter of statutory construction), in which case I'd argue that Congress got it wrong. But someone dropped the ball somewhere.
 
Hoot, Hoosiers were on the cutting edge of this issue.

Read about State of Indiana vs. Ford Motor Co. This link explains the policy and reasoning on all sides of corporate criminal liability.

I found this link and case to be both interesting and enlightening. Given all the adverse publicity regarding the Pinto car, the defense lawyers certainly earned their fees.

A few of the ideas in the link which caught my attention were...

The notion that a corporation could be held accountable for its criminal actions (corporate creation of a defective product) was a novel legal concept at the time (1978).

Thus, Malcolm Wheeler, a lawyer who assisted in Ford's defense, supports the classic legal contention that businesses, while reaping the benefits of legal personhood, are not subject to traditional criminal law.

I don't believe for a second that corporations should be charged criminally very often--it should be a very rare, rare thing. It should only be used, the criminal law,.., when the civil law won't work.


I am left asking myself whether a financial institution can create a defective product. In a broad definition of defective product I suppose it could. However, I don't think the likes of Jamie Dimon, or any of his security product designers, has to worry about criminal indictments.
 
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