Editing Corporate personhood (section)

====Case law in the United States====

In 1818, the [[Supreme Court of the United States|United States Supreme Court]] decided ''[[Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward]]'' – 17 U.S. 518 (1819), writing: "The opinion of the Court, after mature deliberation, is that this corporate [[charter]] is a [[contract]], the obligation of which cannot be impaired without violating the Constitution of the United States. This opinion appears to us to be equally supported by reason, and by the former decisions of this Court." Beginning with this opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court has continuously recognized corporations as having the same rights as natural persons to contract and to enforce contracts.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Does "We the People" Include Corporations? |url=https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/we-the-people/we-the-people-corporations/ |access-date=2022-10-07 |website=www.americanbar.org |language=en}}</ref>

Seven years after the Dartmouth College opinion, the Supreme Court decided ''Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts v. Town of Pawlet'' (1823), in which an English corporation dedicated to missionary work, with land in the U.S., sought to protect its rights to the land under colonial-era grants against an effort by the state of [[Vermont]] to revoke the grants. Justice [[Joseph Story]], writing for the court, explicitly extended the same protections to corporate-owned property as it would have to property owned by natural persons. Seven years later, Chief Justice Marshall stated: "The great object of an incorporation is to bestow the character and properties of individuality on a collective and changing body of men."<ref>''Providence Bank v. Billings'', [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=29&invol=514 29 U.S. 514] (1830).</ref>

In the 1886 case ''[[Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific]]'' &ndash; 118 U.S. 394 (1886), Chief Justice Waite of the Supreme Court orally directed the lawyers that the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]] equal protection clause guarantees constitutional protections to corporations in addition to natural persons, and the oral argument should focus on other issues in the case.<ref>{{Cite book|author=Calvert, Clay|chapter=Freedom of Speech Extended to Corporations|editor=Finkelman, Paul|title=Encyclopedia of American civil liberties, Volume 1|publisher=CRC Press|year=2006|isbn=978-0-415-94342-0|page=650|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YoI14vYA8r0C&pg=PA650}}</ref> In the Santa Clara case the court reporter, [[Bancroft Davis]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Hartman |first=Thom |title=Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's Press |year=2002}}</ref> noted in the headnote to the opinion that the Chief Justice, [[Morrison Waite]], began oral argument by stating, "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]] to the [[Constitution of the United States|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 the opinion that it does."<ref>118 U.S. 394 (1886) – Official court Syllabus in the United States Reports</ref> While the headnote is not part of the Court's opinion and thus not [[precedent]], two years later, in ''[[Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania]]'' &ndash; 125 U.S. 181 (1888), the Court clearly affirmed the doctrine, holding, "Under the designation of 'person' there is no doubt that a private corporation is included [in the Fourteenth Amendment]. Such corporations are merely associations of individuals united for a special purpose and permitted to do business under a particular name and have a succession of members without dissolution."<ref>''Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania'', [http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/125/181/case.html 125 U.S. 394] (1886).</ref> This doctrine has been reaffirmed by the Court many times since.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Choudhury |first1=Barnali |last2=Petrin |first2=Martin |title=Understanding the Company: Corporate Governance and Theory |date=20 July 2017 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-21094-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jwQvDwAAQBAJ&dq=Fourteenth+Amendment+corporations+reaffirmed+many+times+since&pg=PA170 |language=en}}</ref>

The 14th Amendment does not insulate corporations from all government regulation, any more than it relieves individuals from all regulatory obligations. Thus, for example, in ''[[Northwestern Nat Life Ins. Co. v. Riggs]]'' (203 U.S. 243 (1906)), the Court accepted that corporations are for legal purposes "persons", but still ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment was not a bar to many state laws which effectively limited a corporation's right to contract business as it pleased. However, this was not because corporations were not protected under the Fourteenth Amendment—rather, the Court's ruling was that the Fourteenth Amendment did not prohibit the type of regulation at issue, whether of a corporation or of sole proprietorship or partnership.{{Citation needed|date=July 2011}}