A corporation is a legal entity created by law to advance a certain economic interest. The extent a corporation should engage itself should be limited to what is prescribed in its statute. The corporation unlike the individual should have a limitation in its engagement with the public. The argument that corporations should enjoy the same legal rights the individual enjoy would make them super humans who would lord over the people killing the very essence of democracy.
Corporations have more influence than individuals due to their economic strength. As such putting the individual at the same level with a corporation will disadvantage the individual because he cannot gather the same economic and influence muscle the corporation does. Furthermore the corporation though an independent organ is owned by individuals who can hind behind its mask to advance their personal agenda. Their rights therefore should go as far as what concerns their primary reason for existence.
Otherwise granted more than the corporations are likely to sway the public sway. What would evolve then is a situation where the corporate world dominates civilian rule. The rights of corporations should be therefore be limited to economic matters and not the political process. As the article argues it should be limited to the rights as enshrined in the constitution.
Raising a corporation to a human beings level is in itself a case of elevating a non living with the living and therefore a degradation of the living human being to the level of a corporation or elevating a non-living corporation to the level of a human being. A creation of the law cannot be equated to a living human being whose existence came by birth. It cannot be compared with a human since it is not living rather it exists. Its rights should entirely be limited to its charter and its involvement in politics limited so as to level the playing field and wade off the threat of this country being held hostage by corporations. John Marshall’s positions should be seen as the most level-headed. The insight the founding fathers had on this nation should be upheld that corporation’s involvement in daily life should be limited to their economic activities so as to protect individual freedoms from being trumped down by corporations by virtue of their strength.
