Ian, Thanks for this...
Except Santa Clara never said that. Thom Hartmann went and looked up the original case. The infamous short note that everyone is taught as the case was the headnote written by the Court reporter, a man who happened to have worked for the railroads. Hartmann's arguments may be found in "Unequal Protection: The rise of corporate dominance and theft of human rights" which was published in October.
Years ago I looked up the case (I felt, as now, it was a fundamental, irrational and arbitrary problem in our society) and saw that the Supreme Court said no such thing. As I recall, the commentator said something to the effect that "It's a good thing this is just a simple property line case or we would have had to rule on the personhood of corporations." The case was over the legality of a Southern Pacific Railroad fence along its roadbed right of way. I have never been able to find out (having no understanding -- happily, I think -- of legal scholarship) how the comment got to be the rule of the land. I'm more interested in the social/political process rather than the legal one. I've deep suspicion that the legal process is rarely more than the hardening of the social arteries by those who feel they are in charge of them.
Dan Scanlan
