Editing Corporation (section)

== Personhood ==
{{main|Corporate personhood}}
Despite not being human beings, corporations have been ruled [[Legal personality|legal persons]] in a few countries, and have many of the same rights as  [[natural person]]s do. For example, a corporation can own property, and can sue or be sued for as long as it exists. Corporations can exercise [[human rights]] against real individuals and the state,<ref>{{cite book |title=The Human Rights of Companies: Exploring the Structure of ECHR Protection |first1=Marius |last1=Emberland |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-19-928983-7 |page=1 |url=http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-928983-2.pdf |access-date=2 June 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120617104051/http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-928983-2.pdf |archive-date=17 June 2012 |url-status=dead |df=dmy-all }}</ref><ref>e.g. [[South African Constitution]] Sect.8, especially Art.(4)</ref> and they can themselves be responsible for human rights violations.<ref>Phillip I. Blumberg, The Multinational Challenge to Corporation Law: The Search for a New Corporate Personality, (1993) discusses the controversial nature of additional rights being granted to corporations.</ref> Corporations can be "dissolved" either by statutory operation, the order of the court, or voluntary action on the part of shareholders. [[Insolvency]] may result in a form of corporate failure, when creditors force the liquidation and dissolution of the corporation under court order,<ref>See, for example, the Business Corporations Act (B.C.) [SBC 2002] chapter 57, Part 10</ref> but it most often results in a restructuring of corporate holdings. Corporations can even be convicted of special criminal offenses in the UK, such as [[fraud]] and [[corporate manslaughter]]. However, corporations are not considered living entities in the way that humans are.<ref>e.g. [[Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007]]</ref>

Legal scholars and others, such as [[Joel Bakan]], have observed that a business corporation created as a "legal person" has a [[psychopathy|psychopathic personality]] because it is required to elevate its own interests above those of others even when this [[externality|inflicts major risks and grave harms]] on the public or on other third-parties. Such critics note that the legal mandate of the corporation to focus exclusively on corporate profits and self-interest often victimizes employees, customers, the public at large, and/or the [[environmental economics|natural resources]].<ref>Joel Bakan, [https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Corporation/Joel-Bakan/9780743247467 "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210730014716/https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Corporation/Joel-Bakan/9780743247467 |date=2021-07-30 }} (New York: The Free Press, 2004)</ref> The political theorist [[David Runciman]] notes that corporate personhood forms a fundamental part of the 21st century conception [[state (polity)|state]], and believes the idea of the corporation as legal persons can help to clarify the role of citizens as political [[Stakeholder (corporate)|stakeholders]], and to break down the sharp conceptual dichotomy between the state and the people or the individual, a distinction that, on his account, is "increasingly unable to meet the demands placed on the state in the modern world".<ref>{{cite journal|last=Runciman|first=David|author-link=David Runciman|year=2000|title=Is the State a Corporation?|journal=Government and Opposition|volume=35|number=1|pages=90, 103–104|doi=10.1111/1477-7053.00014|s2cid=143599471}}</ref>