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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (64500)	5/8/2008 3:56:34 PM
From: Bridge Player	Respond to of 543581

Tim, Wiki offers the following interesting piece. ================================================= "A rather significant legal fiction that is still in use today is corporate personhood (see corporation). In the common law tradition, only a natural person could sue or be sued. This was not a problem in the era before the Industrial Revolution, when the typical business venture was either a sole proprietorship or partnership—the owners were simply liable for the debts of the business. A feature of the corporation, however, is that the owners/shareholders enjoyed limited liability—the owners were not liable for the debts of the company. In early lawsuits for breach of contract, the corporate defendants argued that they could not be sued as they were not persons; if this argument were to be accepted, the plaintiffs would be without recourse, since the shareholders were not liable for the debts of the corporation by statute. To resolve the issue, courts created an elegant solution—a corporation is a person, and could therefore sue and be sued, and thus held accountable for its debts. This ensured that creditors would be able to seek relief in the courts should the corporation default on its obligations, encouraging banks to extend credit to the corporation. This simple fiction enabled corporations to acquire wealth, expand, and become the preferred organizational form for businesses of all sizes. Corporate personhood has come under criticism recently, as courts have extended other rights to the corporation beyond those necessary to ensure their liability for debts. Other commentators argue that corporate personhood is not a fiction anymore—it simply means that for some legal purposes, "person" has now a wider meaning than it had before and it still has in non-legal uses."