What Rights Do Corporations Never Have?

Corporations haven't any rights...never have and never will. But it would be helpful to list a few of the obvious ones that judges and lawyers have fooled themselves into accepting as real. This partial list is given in the order they appear in the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Following each is a [bracketed numeral] to indicate the amendment in question.

Most thinking errors employed in the manufacture of corporate rights are rooted in ignorance of the Law of Identity and are examples of misuse of a principle, arguing in a circle, the fallacy of composition, begging the question, stare decisis, and precedent. Bear in mind a few points as you read this:

• Any legislative effort that bestows on corporations a right in the guise of "lawfully enacted privileges" would be an obvious subterfuge of both logic and the law.
• "Rights," whatever their origin and substance, have long been considered inalienable. This fundamental tenet of law means that rights cannot be transferred from one living individual to another nor from an individual, e.g a shareholder or employee, to an organization.
• The words of conservative pundit George Will: "Rights inhere in individuals, not in groups." (Mr. Will's rhetorical sleight-of-hand becomes clear once you realize that the common law includes corporations under the heading "individuals" even though corporations, voluntary chartered associations of investors, were originally conceived of as artificial legal entities.)
• Owners of corporations can easily circumvent the restrictions on corporate behaviour by surrendering their corporate charters. Their businesses would then revert to partnership or sole proprietorship status.
• Corporations will not be "deprived of their rights," and how could they when they never had rights in the first place?
• "A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom." -Thomas Paine

(1) Freedom of speech

Any "speaking" (internal or directed at the public in the form of advertising, contracts, and so forth) done by a corporation in the course of business is at the pleasure of the voting public and may be restricted as they see fit. Any legislative effort with the object of bestowing a right to free speech and passed in the guise of "lawfully enacted privileges" would be an obvious subterfuge of both the law and logic. [1]

(2) Freedom of the press

Only a living person, e.g. a publisher or editor, can hold this right, not the organizations for whom such people work. Read the masthead of your local paper where you should find the names of such individuals. Tribune Corp., News Corp., AOL Time Warner, et al. do NOT have the right to freedom of the press. [1]

(3) The right of the people to peaceably assemble

A corporation is property, if not a voluntary collective, and, in any case, unnecessary for the enjoyment of this right. Likewise, it is nonsensical to argue that mergers and acquisitions are a means to exercise the right to assembly. [1]

Since a corporation is the creation of the state, it exists at the pleasure of the state and can be regulated with impunity, e.g. it can be prohibted from holding meetings except in the time, place and manner chosen by elected officials. Owners and management of corporations can easily escape such government meddling by surrendering their corporate charters and reverting to partnership or sole proprietorship status. [1]

(4) The right to petition government for redress of grievances

How can it be rational to assume that an artificial creation of government is entitled to representation? Only citizens and voters, as individuals, have such a right. Taxation or no taxation, corporations are the slaves of government, and not the other way around. As for corporate lobbying of government, the practical reality is such that corporations will have to be prohibited outright from encouraging or paying any person or organization to represent its interests to a legislature or the other branches of government. They will be prohibited access to Presidents and state governors and from submitting amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs to the courts themselves or via intermediaries. [1]

(5) A well-regulated militia

The selective thinking among gun nuts disregards that the clause "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" is a subordinate clause in the Second Amendment. This subordinate clause defines a feature of the singular right reserved to the people by that amendment: A well-regulated militia. Non-persons like a corporation don't have this right. [2]

(As of May 2005 I do not know of any court which has ruled on this particular right with respect to corporations—but it should be only a matter of time with well-armed private security firms operating in Iraq and elsewhere.)

(6) The right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects and against unreasonable searches and seizures

A non-person like a corporation can be "secure in its person?" What are America's judges smoking? Again, the corporation is an artificial and intangible entity created by government. It's also a collective piece of property which itself owns property. Since property has no rights, corporations are not entitled to such security, nor the benefit of a warrant issued "upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." [4]

(7) Habeus corpus, Latin for "have the body"

Now this one should have been a clue to the least gullible of the world's lawyers that corporations aren't people with rights. The writ of habeus corpus ad subjiciendum (the Great Writ) is issued upon petition to challenge the lawfulness of holding a person who is jailed or otherwise restrained. The purpose is to determine the lawfulness of the custody, not the guilt or innocence of the restrained person. But since when do corporations have bodies? If fact, the only analogous features of a corporation are its real estate, plant, equipment, charter documents, and so forth, the unlawful custody of which is called theft. [5 and Article 1, Section 9]

(8) Freedom from double jeopardy in both criminal and civil procedings

Corporations, should they be suspected of a crime, may be tried repeatedly until all the facts are brought into the open and a conviction obtained. Likewise, those harmed by the wrongful, illegal or injurious acts (torts) of a corporation may press for compensatory and punitive damages as often as needed. Congressional legislation in April 2005 partially undermined this. [5 and 7]

(9) The right to not be compelled in a criminal case to be a witness against oneself

People use the expression "plead the Fifth" in reference to this one, although the Fifth Amendment also constrains government in several other ways. Corporations are not "selves" but rather artificial creations of the state. As such, both they and their owners, managers and employees may be compelled to testify against them. [5]

(10) The right not to be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process

A corporation has no life of its own, even though judges and lawyers like to pretend otherwise. In fact, the corporation is an at will entity, i.e. it exists at the will of a government by "We the people...", although such will is never a license to play fast and loose with fact or logic. A corporate charter, therefore, is not a contract and may be altered as the people see fit. Likewise, certain uses of corporate property may be proscribed without compensation accruing to the corporation or its owners. [5]

(11) Private property may not be taken for public use without just compensation

A corporation is a form of property, usually collective, which itself owns property. But property has no rights, viz. the right to private property or to "just" compensation for the taking thereof. Jurists sometimes refer to this as the "takings clause." [5]

(12) The right to a speedy and public trial by impartial jury [6]

(13) The right to be confronted by witnessess against the accused [6]

(14) The right of trial by jury in suits at common law, i.e. in civil procedings for torts and whatnot [7]

(15) No excessive bail, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted

A corporation cannot be arrested, jailed or executed in the traditional sense again underscoring the absurdity of pretending that a corporation is a person. There is no reason, therefore, why draconian punishment could not be assessed for crimes that might earn a living person less harsh treatment. For instance, there could be a one-strike-you're-out law that revokes a corporate charter—the corporate death penalty—for an offense like racketeering, a crime that normally would entail neither a life sentence nor execution. [8]

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the
aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to
challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance
to the laws of our country.”

- Thomas Jefferson