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To: Yorikke who wrote (10793)	5/7/2006 11:12:52 PM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78421

The first corporations legally were cities in England. Their implicit shareholders were the rate payers. A city legally is an incorporated municipality. For instance Gloucester was incorporated by Richard II in 1483. en.wikipedia.org thecanadianencyclopedia.com Corporations as a person. en.wikipedia.org Michael Moore missed something. History of corporate personhood The history of corporate law in the United States can be directly tied to the ebb and flow of the debate first enunciated between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson over how centralized the government of the United States should be, how much power the member states should have over their own affairs, and how much say citizens and citizen organizations should have in public affairs. While both Hamilton and Jefferson participated in the creation of the more centralized United States out of the original confederation by the Federalist Party, they had very different ideals as to what the new creation should be. Hamilton believed in a strong central government which he believed necessary for an industrialized nation while Jefferson believed in a de-centralized, more agrarian nation (see Jeffersonian democracy). When Hamilton as Secretary of Treasury created a national bank for the new country (see First Bank of the United States), Jefferson was much against the idea. Later President Andrew Jackson did his best to emasculate the Second Bank of the United States (see Jacksonian democracy). The Federal Constitution of 1788 did not mention corporations, thereby leaving the chartering of corporations to the states since the Constitution did not explicitly say otherwise. In the late 1700s and early 1800s corporations began to be chartered by the states. Corporations already existed in the new nation, but these were primarily educational corporations or institutions chartered by the British crown which continued to exist after the new nation was created from the Confederation. Due to experience as British Colonies and the accompanying corporate colonialism from British corporations chartered by the crown to do business in North America, new corporations were greeted with mixed feelings. Thomas Jefferson said, "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." hmmmm.. scary.. on the other hand he was referring to British Government corporations.. that were independent of their law... but there is a parallel...

To: Yorikke who wrote (10793)	5/7/2006 11:34:36 PM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 78421

Corporate rights enshrined in law. In 1818, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in another such matter, Dartmouth College v. Woodward 17 U.S. 518 1819. Daniel Webster was the advocate for Dartmouth. He concluded his argument in the following emotional fashion, directly addressed to that same John Marshall, now chief justice. Webster equated the property rights of the donors and their trustees with the cause of literature and science, in short, with civilization itself. "Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. But if you do, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after another, all those great lights of science which, for more than a century, have thrown their radiance over our land. It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet, there are those who love it." At this point, the Chief Justice is said to have become teary. The following year, he read from the bench the court's decision in that matter. The key paragraph in the decision is as follows: "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." A public outcry ensued. State courts and legislatures, supported by many of their constituents, declared that state governments had an absolute right to amend or repeal a corporate charter. (Richard L Grossman and Frank T. Adams, Taking Care of Business, Citizenship and the Charter of Incorporation (Cambridge: Charter, Ink., 1993), p. 11-12). 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 that 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 corporation-owned property as it would have to property owned by natural persons.