Like many of my classmates, I was intrigued by the idea of corporate personhood after viewing The Corporation. The idea of corporate personhood is strangely familiar and pervasive, despite being something I have not given much thought to in the past (beyond acknowledging a vague discomfort with the idea whenever it was raised).
Following Monday’s lecture, I tried to pinpoint my specific uneasiness with the idea of corporate personhood, and to separate discomfort from a broader distress over the negative effects of certain corporations’ policies highlighted in the film. Part of this unease lies, I think, in the apparent ability of corporations to pick and choose which aspects of ‘personhood’ to adopt as suits their current purpose. Additionally, as pointed out by classmates (and driven home by John Oliver in his lampooning of the Hobby-Lobby case), corporations appear to leverage ‘extra’ benefits of personhood that ordinary ‘natural persons’ do not—limited liability being one example given.
I can understand the purpose and efficacy of incorporation. Having worked in the not-for-profit industry for many years, I can’t imagine many of the organizations I worked for would have been able to carry out their mandates without the protection of limited liability. They simply lacked the resources to risk operations without such protection. Still, even recognizing the value of incorporation, my feeling of discomfort with the idea of corporate ‘personhood’ persists.
Turning to the Canadian Business Corporations Act and re-reading section 15(1), something clicked. My worry, it seemed, lay not so much in the concept of corporations possessing legal personhood, but more in what we neglect to include in that meaning. Section 15(1) reads that “[a] corporation has the capacity and, subject to this Act, the rights, powers and privileges of a natural person”. Fine, sure. But we as natural persons—and citizens—also have responsibilities. Discover Canada details some of our responsibilities as citizens online, including helping others in the community. I may be overly-conflating ideas of citizenship and personhood, yet the language of s 15(1) seems to highlight an inequity whereby we grant corporations all the rights and privileges of a natural person, without also clearly attaching the same responsibilities a natural person bears.
Noam Chomsky observes in the film that there is no natural law stating that corporations must value profit above all. As discussed in class, given that corporations are creatures of statute, there is no reason why the terms of their creation cannot be altered to include values beyond the pursuit of profit for shareholders. As corporations expand their rights under the persona of personhood, this film had me wondering about the responsibilities that accompany personhood, how we might identify these, and whether it might be possible to expand corporate personhood to include not only the rights, powers and privileges of a natural person, but the obligations as well. Were corporations’ responsibilities expanded beyond a duty to their shareholders, I, at least, would find the idea of corporate personhood much less perturbing.
A side note: I found this (somewhat dated) article in Slate addressing whether Corporations should have religious liberty quite interesting (granted, it deals with an American case). I also wanted more information than was provided in the film about the rise of the idea of corporate personhood, and found this NPR summary informative.
Course Facebook Page
