His presentation would be so much more believable if he just chucked a bit
of the breathy editorializing and stuck to the facts.
That Jefferson wanted an anti-monopoly amendment does not in and of itself,
mean that he was anti-corporation. One can exist absent the other -- and at
least in the U.S., our legal system has accounted for this (see the Sherman
Antitrust Act for starters).
As for the supposed flub in the headnotes, if you read a bit farther down
(still in the syllabus, admittedly, but a clarification Mr. Hartmann omitted
to mention:
"One of the points made and discussed at length in the brief of counsel for
defendants in error was that "corporations are persons within the meaning of
the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."* Before
argument, MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE said:*
*"The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the
provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids a
state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of
the laws applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does."
*
This actually seems less like some nefarious error, and more like what
actually occurs in court cases all too frequently. The Supreme Court
usually addresses a few of the issues on appeal. In this case, Justice
Waite was reiterating that the corporate personhood issue was not at issue
in this case, because "the court" was all of the opinion that it was. To me,
this reads as non-binding dicta, rather than some horrible plot by
corporations to 'sneak' personhood into existence.
Moreover, Hartmann's "evil railroad" theory not grossly presumes that the
lot of Supreme Court Justices, from that point on, are all a bunch of
incredibly lazy individuals ("[the statement] was taken as precedent by
generations of
jurists ... who followed and apparently read the headnote but not the
decision"), but he misses a few crucial bits in history as well.
Primarily, SCOTUS (and the lower courts) had all been moving in the
direction of recognizing corporate personhood, albiet in differing degrees.
For once, I cite Wikipedia, because it actually correctly details the debate
(and the relevant cases) that I remember from L-school:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
An important aside. Corporate personhood can't merely be revoked, as some
have argued, on account of this 'clerical error' because SCOTUS actually
agreed with the dicta in subsequent cases e.g., *Northwestern Nat Life Ins.
Co. v.
Riggs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_Nat_Life_Ins._Co._v._Riggs>
* (203 U.S. 243 (1906) (citing Blake v. McClung, 172 U.S. 239
(1900)<http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=172&invol=239#260>
"It is true, also, that a corporation of one state, doing business in
another state, under such circumstances as to be directly subject to its
process at the instance of suitors, may invoke the protection of that clause
of the 14th Amendment which declares that no state shall 'deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.'"
I'm not entirely sure about your second statement re: corporate personhood
being the basis of business -- There are plenty of businesses (solo
practitioners, partnerships, etc.) that are not formal corporations, and
nonetheless manage to exist profitably as businesses and fuel the economy.
Moreover, corporate charters were able to survive as businesses before the
whole personhood deal was decided...
C
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