Given that the Supreme Court has told us that corporations are persons, wouldn’t it be great if they were really treated like persons before the law? Take the British Petroleum oil spill. Given that 11 people died in this disaster, shouldn’t BP be brought up on manslaughter or second degree murder charges? And like others that are found guilty of second degree murder or manslaughter, shouldn’t BP be sent to jail? Here I’m not talking about sending the CEOs to jail, but the corporation itself. Like the Geico car insurance commercials where there’s the little bundle of money with eyes that look at you, we could place some sort of certificate representing the corporation in a jail cell for the duration of its term. During this time, all business activities, stock trading of the company stock, etc., would be completely halted. Perhaps BP would be in jail for 40 years, and during this time all of its business would be completely suspended. After all, that’s what happens to others when they go to jail. And wouldn’t this lead corporations to make greater consideration of the public good and welfare?
And while we’re at it, we need a new set of laws revolving around “ecocide”. Ecocide consists in the murder of irreplaceable ecological systems. This is certainly what is now unfolding in the gulf. Shouldn’t the Bill of Rights be expanded to include ecological systems and animals? When you really begin to think about it, it’s bizarre that anyone can own the land.
May 28, 2010 at 11:54 pm
[…] under Uncategorized | Tags: corporations, personhood | Leave a Comment Levi Bryant has a good point about the culpability of BP in the oil leakage in the Gulf. If corporations want to be treated like […]
May 29, 2010 at 3:30 am
The counter-argument would be that criminal liability is properly applied to natural rather than artificial persons. Legal (and moral) personhood is rather theological–Kantarowicz’s text is the classic on this point. The papers idea is something interesting. Presumably the official documents of incorporation would be the ones incarcerated.
May 29, 2010 at 8:56 am
Whatever we do we can’t escape that bloody Thomas Hobbes!
May 29, 2010 at 5:13 pm
At least in political theory. Although Kantorowicz understands personhood to have a much longer history in Western thought than Hobbes. There is also interesting anthropological work on the concept.
May 29, 2010 at 7:53 pm
In theory corporations can be prosecuted criminally, and it happens occasionally. Of course it then raises a new problem: if corporations may be subject to criminal prosecutions, do they have the constitutional rights normally afforded to defendants in criminal cases, and if so, how does one construe them in a way that makes sense?
May 30, 2010 at 7:29 am
@Craig: In my infinite ignorance, I wasn’t aware of Kantorowicz’s work. I’ll have to check it out, thanks.
May 30, 2010 at 1:43 pm
When you really begin to think about it, it’s bizarre that anyone can own the land.
Indeed. Raj Patel’s book The Value of Nothing contains an impassioned defence of the commons against the encroachment of enclosure and private ownership.