Corporate Identity

It is most likely written in stone somewhere that at a given point in any adult’s life, he or

she will complain bitterly about “big business”, the faceless corporations and the way that

said corporations control their life and abuse their service.

Now I for one am not about to buck that trend. I read a book quite some time ago now,

“Unequal Protection” written by Thom Hartman. The reason I mention this is that I read

an article tonight which reminded me of it and it raised some pertinent, not to mention

interesting questions over corporate practices as they would pertain to America, and by

default the majority of the “Free World” encompassed by NAFTA, and GATT and the

newer FTAA.

I doubt that many people are unfamiliar with the term “Fat Cat”? A term that found

definition in the nineties- as it came to epitomize the greed prevalent in the corporate

world, particularly to be found amidst executives. Indeed the Enron and WorldCom

scandals these past few years have put added emphasis on the activities of some of the

most influential business people in America and the world today.

Well to think that this overblown and greed ridden situation could have arrived from the

lowliest of circumstances may be hard to believe but, according to Thom Hartman this is

exactly what did occur.

Hartman argues that the strength and therefore the danger of multi-national corporations

does not stem from their wealth, nor their influence; rather these are products of a special

allowance that gives corporations power beyond that which they should be allowed. That

is the rights of an individual under the United States Constitution. These rights include:

Free Speech (and the right to influence legislation), Fifth Amendment protections

(protection against self-incrimination and “double jeopardy”), and protection from

searches as if their belongings were personal. As well as those rights corporations may

not be held responsible as you or I might in certain public arenas.

As we can see from those few areas noted above, the conferring of the rights of a person

to a company was extremely beneficial as it gave them freedom to varying degrees from

the need for regulation. As corporations had the same rights as people, there were no

legal tools in place to have their “charter” expire, corporations were people until they

died, which they inevitably failed to do.

One very graphic example of this new and forceful power is apparent in almost every

government in the world but none more so than in the U.S. and this is of course corporate

sponsorship of various political parties.

In the U.S. we have the lobbyists from any number of corporations pressing this and that

cause with one hand all the while stuffing used notes into the pockets of their governmental pals with the other. Many a good deed has been undone in this way and many a foul scheme enacted.

However, this was not always the case and before the middle of the eighteenth century

corporations were treated very differently by the then world powers of Great Britain,

Spain, the Dutch and the French. In the first century of Americas’ existence courts as far up as the Supreme Court said time and again that corporations did not have the same rights as a person.

So why did it change? What earth-shattering revelation was stumbled upon to alter the way of thinking of so many people that in the 1886 case of Santa Clara Country v. Southern

Pacific Railroad corporations, it was considered that the corporation finally did deserve those rights that it had fought so long and hard to get?

Well you might be surprised. According to Mr. Hartman, after much referring to old

court cases, documents and anecdotal evidence (all substantially reinforced in the books

bibliography) the decision granting the privileges of a person was not actually made.

The precedent which was set, and which has been used countless times since, was not

actually the ruling but rather an interpretation of the decision by the reporter of the case

in headnotes (which in themselves apparently have no legal standing).

It seems that back in those days when the railroads were streaking across the continental

United States court stenographers were unheard of and that any minutes of sessions were

recorded by reporters in the form of such "headnotes".

So there we have it, in a nutshell, according to Thom Hartman we now have the greatest

and possibly the truest gripe when complaining about corporations. It is amazing and

worrying to entertain the notion that the unhealthy and disproportionate hold modern

multi-national corporations have over us is all based on a mistake, a mistake that now has

the force of one hundred plus years of precedent in the legal mechanisms of the most

powerful and capitalistic country in the world.

Addendum:

Nearly a quarter-century later, the "mistake" that never quite was a formal ruling has only grown more entrenched and destructive.

The headnote from Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) morphed into a cornerstone doctrine, extended by the Supreme Court in cases like Citizens United v. FEC (2010)—which declared corporate political spending a form of protected free speech—and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), granting for-profit companies religious exemptions from generally applicable laws.

These rulings have flooded elections with unlimited dark money from corporations and wealthy donors, eroded public trust in democracy, and let artificial entities claim rights never intended for flesh-and-blood humans.

Positively, the fight continues: groups like Move to Amend keep pushing for a constitutional amendment to affirm that "human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights" and that money is not speech.

Recent efforts include Rep. Pramila Jayapal's reintroduced We the People Amendment in 2025, state-level resolutions in places like Arizona and Indiana in 2026 calling for reform, and grassroots initiatives (such as Montana's refiled ballot measure) aiming to curb corporate election influence.

What began as a clerical sleight-of-hand has ballooned into a systemic threat to self-governance—one that proves how a single dubious precedent, left uncorrected for over 140 years, can hand disproportionate power to the unelected and unaccountable, all while "We the People" remain side-lined in our own republic.