Corporate Personhood

In the first decade of the 21st century, a five-justice majority of the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that corporations are “persons” vested with the same constitutionally protected rights as actual persons, a legal recognition for which corporate lawyers had long campaigned. The ruling was stunning to many, as it disregarded the clearly stated warnings of prominent U.S. Constitutional framers, such as Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, and lacked jurisprudential precedent in the previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings. It also lacked any legislative basis at either the state or the federal levels and contravened public opinion, which clearly opposes the notion of corporate personhood.

The ruling has significant implications for surveillance, security, and privacy issues related to corporate owners and operators because as corporate ...