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Unexpected things that are people
- DuckOnFire 10mo agoIt’s fascinating how corporate personhood started as a legal convenience but ended up shaping how power and responsibility work in modern society.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- viciousvoxel 10mo agoThe Whanganui river is in fact only the second of three geological features to have been granted personhood in NZ, the others being Te Urewera and Taranaki Mounga (mountain).
- EdwardDiego 10mo agoMaunga :)
- viciousvoxel 10mo agoDoh, thanks. I even googled to check my spelling but the first article that came up was from The Guardian which also misspelled it :'(
- EdwardDiego 10mo agoHaha, it's all good, and it gets fun when you hit the South Island / Te Waipounamu dialect of Māori where a maunga is a mauka, and sky is raki not rangi, but both variants are still used. A classroom at my childrens' primary school was called Maungatere (floating mountain) after a nearby mountain which is now called Maukatere, same meaning. Likewise the local iwi/tribe in my area is known both as Kāi Tahu and Ngāi Tahu, and there's a town in North Canterbury called Rangiora, which translates to, roughly "Good sky", while the 3rd largest island of Aotearoa New Zealand is called Rakiura / Stewart Island, Rakiura meaning "Glowing sky". And our tallest mountain Aoraki / Mount Cook used to be Aorangi / Mount Cook. And to be fair, "Mounga" is a decent rendition of how you pronounce "Maunga".
- metada5e 10mo agoI recommend reading the book 'For Profit' for deeper knowledge on this topic - the book covers the origin of corporations and the ideas lying behind legal personhood. It sounds like a dry read but it is surprisingly well written and as much about history as about law. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60568507-for-profit https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60568507-for-profit Criminal and Civil liability are the two topics to focus on - you will find that non-human entities have very limited categories of crimes that apply to them. This is a key topic in the emergence of 'seemingly conscious' or 'seemingly unitary' AGI compute entities. Also worth noting that Common Law tends to be the primary mode of law globally, even in counties that are nominally Code Napoleon (aka Civil Law) countries.
- eatonphil 10mo agoLooks interesting, thank you!
- ACCount37 10mo agoAmusingly enough, corporate personhood is one relatively straightforward pathway for a capable AGI to attain legal personhood. No novel legislation required. Just some legal grey areas and a whole lot of scheming.
- mrtesthah 10mo agoIn the US, a corporation needs a business bank account, and that account must be registered to one or more corporate officers with legal identification.
- actionfromafar 10mo agoDoes it count if the officer is in cryosleep?
- rzzzt 10mo agoA bench warrant is indefinite so they will be brought to court immediately after core temperature and circulation is restored. It will be posted to the cylinder like a parking ticket. IANAL, not in any of the parallel universes either!
- chemotaxis 10mo agoWouldn't personal property in the US fall under the same criteria, in the sense that the government can sue the property itself (civil forfeiture)? But I think the boring answer here is that we sometimes need legal abstractions. If they don't exist, Microsoft is no longer a distinct entity; it's 200,000 people who for some reason talk to each other, and you can't really audit their finances, punish them collectively, or set any ground rules that apply specifically to their joint activities. This obviously has negative externalities, because while a corporation is easy to fine, it's hard to put in prison... but trying to approach it differently would be about as fun as modeling a CPU as a bunch of transistors.
- xg15 10mo agoI think there is a difference between having some sort of legal entity to classify organized groups as - and that legal entity being equivalent of a person.
- roywiggins 10mo agoProperty can't enter into contracts or own bank accounts, which is probably the big marker for traditional corporate personhood. It might be possible to sue property but property can't itself sue, so it's not the same type of thing as a corporate person, which can. You wouldn't need "in rem" jurisdiction if there was a legal person to sue, you'd just call it "in personam" like normal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_rem_jurisdiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_rem_jurisdiction
- AlotOfReading 10mo agoEstates do most of that without any notion of personhood. Suing an estate is in rem. When the estate sues someone else, the executor sues on its behalf. The executor can also enter the estate into new contracts and administer the bank accounts it owns, and so on. The estate can even own a corporation.
- degamad 10mo agoThe estate "inherits" (pun intended) its abilities from the personhood of the deceased. It is in effect a legal "Weekend at Bernie's", keeping the deceased party legally alive in order to continue their interests until those interests can be appropriately disposed of. The estate doesn't have independent interests distinct from those of the deceased. (In particular, the estate is not owned by, and does not serve, the beneficiaries.) A corporation has independent goals and interests from any of its owners or officers.
- Barbing 10mo ago>In 2017 the New Zealand Parliament passed the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act, which granted the Whanganui river a ‘legal personality’ and endowed it with “all the corresponding rights, duties, and liabilities of a legal person”. Unexpected indeed, interesting!
- leeoniya 10mo agoi wonder how a river would be held liable for propery damage, or wrongful death
- autoexec 10mo agoYou can jail it by building a dam, or banish it from areas by redirecting the river around them, or insert a water wheel and sentence it to forced labor.
- JackFr 10mo agoIt's less silly if one thinks of it as the New Zealand Parliament created a Whanganui River Authority and endowed it with the same structure and rights.
- robot-wrangler 10mo agoThought provoking. Most people who (quite reasonably) hate corporate personhood would probably have a knee-jerk reaction that personhood for a river can/should be normalized. The thing with temples stems ultimately from fairly practical matters if they hold such treasure, but it's a magnet for strife, and actually kind of surprising that in the case-study mentioned they resisted the opportunity to justify abuse of power. What is a lawyer really but a kind of priest or magician, changing material reality with obscure incantations of dubious origin? Historically and practically speaking, I get the impression that the boat stuff seems the least controversial and makes the most sense. Incoherent to want to sue a river for flooding, but if a boat crashes into your house for example, then you'd like to be able to at least seize the boat without enduring the back-and-forth deflection between owners and operators.
- jstanley 10mo ago> Most people who (quite reasonably) hate corporate personhood would probably have a knee-jerk reaction that personhood for a river can/should be normalized. I would have thought that people who hate the idea of corporate personhood would also hate the idea of any other kind of non-person personhood.
- dudeinjapan 10mo agoPart of having personhood is that one’s ideas don’t have to have any logical or consistent basis.
- whatevertrevor 10mo agoI don't think the general hatred of corporate personhood stems from the logical or taxonomic absurdity of it. Rather, I sense it comes from the perceived effects of it, that in their eyes allow corporations to get away without paying their "fair share". I think it's an instrument of convenience that has predictably resulted in a lot of legal tech-debt, which is largely inevitable because of how slow we are at adapting laws to our lived realities.
- justatdotin 10mo ago
- AnimalMuppet 10mo agoThe tree that owns itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself
- jeffreygoesto 10mo agoEthel?
- Rooster61 10mo agoCame here to post this, although sadly it isn't considered a person, and isn't actually the original tree. That said, I'd imagine if anyone tried to take down the son of the tree that owned itself, Athens residents would revolt. It's pretty famous
- selimthegrim 10mo agoThere’s also the tree that got arrested - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/09/03/this-chained-century-old-tree-in-pakistan-is-a-perfect-metaphor-for-colonialism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/09/03...
- DeathArrow 10mo agoIn Romania, a country with Roman Law, the companies are "juridical persons", while the people are "physical persons". The two types of persons do not have the same rights and obligations and they can not commit the same crimes.
- strbean 10mo ago> Similar to nomads, vagabonds, and college students on extended study abroad, But not to be conflated with rovers or wanderers!
- wrboyce 10mo agoCall me what you will.
- tyre 10mo agoPhilosopher Martha Nussbaum filed an amicus brief supporting Happy the elephant’s rights as a legal person. She has a wonderful essay about this and personhood more broadly[0] It seems like there are judges in the US who are sympathetic to the argument that elephants are clearly persons with consciousness, desires, suffering, etc. but that the ramifications of declaring them as such would be too chaotic. One day. [0]: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/03/10/what-we-owe-our-fellow-animals-ethics-martha-nussbaum/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/03/10/what-we-owe-our-...
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- Animats 10mo agoThis article is apparently a spinoff of an AI personhood project.[1] [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.26396 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.26396
- zkmon 10mo ago>> It’s widely known that Corporations are People Really? Businesses and governments can be legal entities, and legal entities need not be people. In case of Hindu deities, temples have properties, just like how the Crown has properties in England. A temple property is usually managed by a Trust, but the property is considered to belong to the deity.
- roywiggins 10mo agoThis concept is called legal personhood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person When it's not a natural person (ie, a human being) it's called a juridical person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juridical_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juridical_person "Person" is in this usage a piece of legal jargon.
- 9rx 10mo ago> "Person" is in this usage a piece of legal jargon. There is no usage of "Person" here. It says "People". The plural of "legal person" is "legal persons", so clearly nobody is talking about that.
- roywiggins 10mo agoThe entire rest of the article is about legal personhood.
- 9rx 10mo agoThat's all well and good, but we're not talking about the rest of the article. Only the bit that says "It’s widely known that Corporations are People" — which is not about legal personhood. "People" always refers to those found in the flesh. Which, like before, is why the law is careful to use "legal persons" instead of "legal people" when the plural form is relevant; to not confuse non-human legal entities as being people.
- cjs_ac 10mo agoNew Zealand also has an official Wizard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_New_Zealand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_New_Zealand
- zkmon 10mo agoYou should change the title to "Unexpected things that are legal entities", to make it less click-baity.
- jama211 10mo agoI think it’s fine because it plays off the commonly stated “corporations are people” sentence that exists in the world.
- umeshunni 10mo agoI usually use that as a bozo filter
- saghm 10mo agoYeah, and I think it's fully intended to embrace how silly it sounds, given the tongue-and-cheek opening paragraph: > It’s widely known that Corporations are People. This is universally agreed to be a good thing; I list Target as my emergency contact and I hope it will one day be the best man at my wedding. It reminds me of that episode of Community where Subway enrolled a person who they hired to legally represent their corporate entity so that they could open a shop on campus without violating the school's rule that only student-run businesses were allowed.
- anigbrowl 10mo agoYes, I was expecting this to be about AI sensory failures.
- mallomarmeasle 10mo agoPerhaps tangentially related: The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals. A nice treatise on laws under which various animals have been tried in court. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43286/43286-h/43286-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43286/43286-h/43286-h.htm
- littlestymaar 10mo agoThis part made me chuckle: > the legal rights of the divine most often come up when land is contested between different faiths and sects (Hindus and Muslims, the Maori and Industry).
- tgv 10mo agoIt's pretty tangential, but > It’s not clear to me how a specific next friend is established - what if the god has a lot of friends? reminded me of Pratchett's Small Gods. If you needed a random book recommendation, this is it.
- scubbo 10mo agoGNU Terry Pratchett.
- beau_g 10mo agoThe ship example maybe wasn't the greatest, in the cases of the Ever Given and MV Aman, the crews were required to stay on the boats as custodians while dealing with these issues, in the latter case a single sailor was on the ship for 4 years, the last 2 alone and without power. Another interesting case with ships is the Trieste and several other Russian oligarch mega yachts being held in Italy. Italian law requires them to maintain the value of frozen assets, so they are spending millions per month to keep these yachts maintained.
- themafia 10mo ago> the crews were required Required by whom? Local legal bodies or maritime agreements?
- FridayoLeary 10mo agoThe second case was apalling. No human would inflict such a cruel punishment like a blind bureaucracy can. A similar case is an iranian who was stuck in a French airport for 18 years. Completely pointless.
- ori_b 10mo ago> Te Awa Tupua is a legal person and has all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person. Does that mean I can sue it for flooding my property?
- iamwil 10mo agoSounds like a classic inheritance design problem. Anyway, I'd be surprised if AI didn't gain some kind of legal status with some kind of limited personhood, if corporations and ships can be.
- pugworthy 10mo agoIt would be interesting if the "no cure, no pay" principle from right of salvage could be applied to medical treatment. Something like this... > The "no cure, no pay" principle is a fundamental concept in medical law where a doctor (the party assisting a human in health danger) is only entitled to a reward if the healing operation is successful in saving the person or part of person (life, limb, sight, hearing, etc.). If the operation fails, the doctor receives no payment, regardless of the effort or expense incurred.
- Vecr 10mo agoAll you would get is even more insurance overhead and even higher nominal prices. People who pay cover people who don't, and doctors will get insurance to pay for all their failures.
- pugworthy 10mo agoOh yes all kinds of ethical issues as well.
- gwbas1c 10mo agoI think the author's (pugworthy's) intent was to disincentivize doctors who take advantage of fee-for-service. For example, a few years ago, I started getting Plantar Faucitis. (Basically, foot pain that happens in middle age.) My doctor sent me to a podiatrist, who basically told me to buy new shoes, use inserts, and stop walking around barefoot. That worked, BUT: The podiatrist also pushed me to do a silicon injection (as in they offered it while they were pulling out the needle and pushing it into my foot), pressured me to come in monthly, and wanted to write a prescription for a painkiller that I didn't need and had side effects. It was clear they were trying to increase their patient load and services as a way to get more revenue.
- jandrewrogers 10mo agoThat sounds like a sure-fire recipe for adverse selection.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- gwbas1c 10mo ago> It’s more like the New Zealand parliament reified a god and gave it a multi-million dollar trust fund to get on its feet. (joke) So if the Whanganui river floods well beyond its expected banks and ruins my property, can I sue it?
- throwaway173738 10mo agoThere’s already a concept of acts of God in contracts so probably not? Like you couldn’t sue the Christian god for hitting you with lightning or whatever.
- lostlogin 10mo ago> you couldn’t sue the Christian god for hitting you with lightning or whatever. What if we make that god a legal person?
- tclancy 10mo agoFor those interested in how the river came to be a person, I highly recommend Robert McFarlane's latest book, "Is a River Alive?". https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218569826-is-a-river-alive https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218569826-is-a-river-ali...
- toast0 10mo agoThe article quotes: > Te Awa Tupua is a legal person and has all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person. Which would seem to be yes. If the river damages your property, you should be able to seek redress through the courts.
- otterley 10mo agoThe first example about ships is inaccurate. A ship isn't treated as a person in the law; it's treated as the thing that it is. There's a specific type of jurisdiction known as "in rem" ("over the thing") that differs from the typical "in personam" ("over the person") that gives the Court the ability to dispose of property without needing jurisdiction over its owner (otherwise known as an ex parte case). These different types of jurisdictions go back centuries, even further back than English common law from which U.S. law is derived. This leads to amusing case names, like "United States v. 422 Casks of Wine" and "United States v. One Solid Gold Object in the Form of a Rooster".
- sandworm101 10mo agoExactly. I expected reference to all sorts of things that have been held at customs. I remember one old case titled something like "New York v. a shipment of dildos." I also remember some state law where guns were 'persons'. If cops wanted to destroy siezed guns they had to go to court, where the guns would be represented by a lawyer who would argue for sale over destruction. (Arizona iirc)
- inglor_cz 10mo agoIn most of the world, "a shipment of dildos" cannot be a participant of a trial, this is a US curiosity.
- MengerSponge 10mo agoI believe that in most parts of the world you will regularly find shipments of dildos participating in trials.
- gsf_emergency_4 10mo agoTotally OT but I just saw your force diagram question. The force diagrams I came up with have "invaginated arrows". In the std diagram students get confused about what forces act on which objects so the invaginated arrows trip them up just enough to make them figure out the right orientation on their own .. If you press me, I'd say these are nothing more than UX trials..
- franze 10mo agoMy sister is a ship insolvency lawyer in Hamburg. Not only is each ship a company (legal person) but also quite often a single shipping transfer is its own company - owned partially by the ship and/or other entities. And when they exchange cargo at a far away port it can get complicated. Also nearly all global long distance shipping transfers have some kind of "Schwund" IANASL (i am not a shipping lawyer)
- dredmorbius 10mo agoMuch corporate and insurance law has deep roots, if not origins in, shipping. Turns out that these are high-cost, high-risk ventures with a highly probabalistic profit/loss distribution, and spanning multiple borders and jurisdictions.
- FridayoLeary 10mo ago>My sister is a ship Found one.
- giobox 10mo agoThe title of this blog post is deliberately provocative. If it was titled "Unexpected things that have legal personhood" it would be much less catchy. No one is actually arguing these things are human beings. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person
- OtherShrezzing 10mo agoThe English Crown is another example. The King is a person who embodies The Crown, but The Crown itself is a discrete abstract legal entity, which is really a form of deity, but is afforded rights of a person (excluding death rights), and the legal status of a corporation. It’s also entirely above the law while being constrained by Parliament.
- themafia 10mo agoIt is above civil law but it's not clear that's absolutely above criminal law. Most of this status is not actually codified in any document.
- anon291 10mo agoCorporate personhood means nothing of what you think it means. People get irrationally angry because we use words that sound the same, even though in no case are corporations ever treated as human beings (duh...). We might as well call it 'subjecthood'. Corporate personhood means a corporation can be the subject of a legal dispute or action. Trivially, corporations have basically no personal rights. All the 'cases', in which corporations have been 'found' to have human rights is because a corporation is made up of people who retain their natural rights no matter how they associate. Corporations are never treated as actual living beings. Are people actually this daft.
- samdoesnothing 10mo ago> Are people actually this daft. Some are, for others its just another mechanism they can use to push for socialism.
- languagehacker 10mo agoThis made me think of The Tree that Owns Itself in Athens, GA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself
- BurningFrog 10mo agoPeople were really upset that "corporations are people" around 2011, but it seems to have died down, as it should. Corporate personhood mostly just means that for some purposes, the same laws apply to corporations as to people. You can think of it as code reuse. There is also the argument that corporations are groups of people. A way for people to organize activities under a system of laws. Which is mostly true.
- nzeid 10mo ago> Corporate personhood mostly just means that for some purposes, the same laws apply to corporations as to people. No, it also means that corporations are protected in ways that were only ever meant to apply to people. Think of it as a failure of separating concerns - one function doing too many things. Every time we pass a law that's intended to apply to people, we have to think of corporations.
- scubbo 10mo ago> Corporate personhood mostly just means that for some purposes, the same laws apply to corporations as to people. In my experience, almost no-one is truly upset about the "corporations are people" idea in isolation. The upset stems from the combination of "corporations are people", "people have a right to free speech", and "political donations are speech", which in effect meant "corporations can make unlimited political donations". If there was a system that categorized political donations as a form of speech that could be limited, 95% of the issue would go away.
- dcminter 10mo agoI rather enjoyed this, although I had assumed from the title that it was going to be "things" like the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority that at one time was Jon Postel (a person). Any other examples of that ilk...?
- golemotron 10mo agoGreat article but disappointed that the monkey with the camera did not make an appearance.
- johnnyApplePRNG 10mo agoI'm smiling already. Excellent read. This writer has SKILLS!
- throwuxiytayq 10mo agoWow, the OO inheritance model really was a mistake.
- jbs789 10mo agoI enjoyed reading this. If we think about applicability to AI (as the footnote suggests was on the authors mind)… I found myself thinking about the motivations and incentives that existed at the time, to understand why. Ships - my read is that major naval powers essentially reduced the downside to owners of ships (making them responsible) while giving the owners salvage rights (“curing” the problem of a wreck which may be an impediment to the passage). That seems to make sense if you put your “I’m a shipowner” hat on. Balanced by the governments also saying if your ship sunk and someone else recovers it, they get some cut bc hey, you didn’t recover it. And the others seem largely about modern governments appeasing religious and indigenous groups. And it’s interesting that this acknowledgement seems to be part of a broader solution (Trust, ongoing governance etc) The first seems more financially motivated (capping downside and clearing shipwrecks). The latter seems more about protecting a natural resource/asset. So then you think about who is leading AI and what their incentives may be… Convenient that we do have modern companies that limit liability, do you just use that structure (as they are) or do they seek to go further and say this Agent or LLM is its own thing, as as a company I’m not responsible for it. maybe that is convenient for the companies, and the gov in the countries leading the charge…? Looks more like ships than rivers..?
- protocolture 10mo agoI think AI personhood will come about via another path. That is the same as Animal rights. We humans in general, suffer, when we perceive animals suffering. Its an entirely emotional response. Humans are developing emotional attachments to LLMs. It follows, to an extent, that people will try and shore up the rights of LLMs simply to assuage their emotions. It doesnt actually matter whether or not it can feel pain, but whether it can express pain in a way that causes a sympathetic emotion in a person.
- FjordWarden 10mo agoPolders have personhood in some jurisdictions. The government reclaimed the land from the sea, sold it to multiple people, levies taxes on them and now the dykes need to be maintained. This is just legal fiction, technology developed and applied cross industry. The mere concept of water rights implies obligations must lie someplace. All this talk about reified gods takes away much of how mundane the concept is.
- drdeadringer 10mo agoIn the novel The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, after the Pope remarks that the aliens involved are "other children of God", I had the thought that perhaps when humans create AI robots, the Pope might consider these robots to be grandchildren of God. I'm not trying to drag religion into this, despite my obviously doing so on the surface. I am trying to see where certain flexibilities might be found, since there seems to be some flexibility on personhood in law.
- hekkle 10mo agoIf someone drowns in Te Awa Tupua, does the river get charged with Murder, or Manslaughter?
- throwaway290 10mo agoIf you strangle yourself with my arm, did I murder you?
- hekkle 10mo agoMy comment was clearly a joke; however yes, in the jurisdiction I am living in, you would be assisting in euthanasia, which would render you liable for murder.
- throwaway290 10mo agoI know it was a joke:) if it's the same in NZ, maybe the river should get some sort of limited license for euthanasia assistance!
- c0brac0bra 10mo agoIf the Te Awa Tupua is a legal person, and it floods its banks and destroys my home, can I sue it and be made whole? It seems like they've afforded a river all the rights and privileges of a person with none of the responsibilities, duties, or obligations.
- petesergeant 10mo agoThat’s the magic of parliamentary sovereignty right there
- throwaway290 10mo agoThey included liabilities. they even recommending the river to register as charitable entity for tax purposes.
- c0brac0bra 10mo agoThe liabilities they listed were in terms of land ownership and allotments. I did not see anything related to acts of God or natural disasters.
- throwaway290 10mo agoSurely it's not rivers fault a bunch of rain water makes it bloated. river and you should sue the clouds:)
- throwawaymaths 10mo agoLet's not forget that incorporated cities, towns etc are people too
- linehedonist 10mo ago> Rhodian sea law, from 900 BCE, states that if a salvor rescues property from the perilous seas, they are entitled to a share of the saved property. Unlikely, given that the Greek alphabet didn’t exist in 900 BCE.
- notepad0x90 10mo agoThe concept of legal personhood is problematic on its own. The law cannot take a concept and add "legal" to it, to expand its definition. it should simply define a new term that has no relationship with the former. Instead of updating laws to adapt to entities that require legislation, they instead chose to expand the meaning of what a person is, so that the protections of a person also applies to that entity, but not always. What a twisted and crooked thing the law is sometimes. A law that contradicts reality or logic is invalid. But we don't follow laws because of their validity, so that is irrelevant. Except for the problem of the legal system's legitimacy, and the public's trust in it. If a corporation, a ship or some other entity requires legal protections or if legal responsibilities should be placed on it, specific law should be passed to that effect. I don't need to go on about the cancerous effect corporate personhood has had in the US in recent years to make a point, but the root cause is legislative laziness. If there are 100000 laws that involve a person, lawmakers are obliged to review every single one of them, determine which ones apply to a company and update those laws, or pass new ones as applicable. For example, there is no reason for corporations being allowed to participate in politics (US), because they don't get to vote and the government derives its powers explicitly from individuals. But the crooked and twisted nature of the law is such that the lazy expansionism of the term "person" created this gray area where corporations can benefit from personhood but avoid its obligations since they're only a "legal" person. It leaves lots of room for interpretation, reverting governance to the whims of individual rulers (judges) instead of the rule of law. And that way, the law commits suicide.
- abustamam 10mo agoI think even movies are people in this sense too (many movies form their own Single Purpose Entity for production). https://rsehgallaw.com/2024/06/30/why-producers-set-up-single-purpose-entities-for-their-individual-film-projects/ https://rsehgallaw.com/2024/06/30/why-producers-set-up-singl...
- voidUpdate 10mo ago> Te Awa Tupua is a legal person and has all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person. If someone drowns in the river, can the river be convicted of murder?
- wink 10mo agoI think it's more like "you drive into my house wall and die, not my fault". The river has been there all along, is not deemed a public hazard to be dismantled and you are supposed to be pay attention.
- voidUpdate 10mo agoThe law apparently states it has the same legal liabilities as a person though, so it should be manslaughter at least?
- BergAndCo 10mo agotl;dr "Unexpected things that share in the concept of corporate personhood when faced with a similar need for an accountability sink: Ships and some public land in the third world"