I will believe that corporations are people when police and governments start executing them.

@WeirdWriter I’m not completely 100% sure of this but I believe #SCOTUS actually used that phrasing in one of their rulings.

@Thumper1964 a lot of people get this backwards (a lot of reporting gets it backwards, so that's understandable).

SCOTUS didn't really say corporations are people. It often said the opposite in its rulings.

BUT

Confusion (and political rhetoric) comes out of a legislative shorthand, a term of art ONLY in the context of drafting legislation, where legislators say when we use the term "people" in a statute we normally include corporations just so we don't have to keep repeating it.

That's the long and short of it. People are told this shorthand is meaningful, but it's really not.

@WeirdWriter

Have you ever witnessed any politician calling "the American people" the "American citizen", or "the American taxpayer"?

Me neither.
Follow

@FourOh-LLC

Not that popular political rhetoric has much to do with legal terminology, but...

Yes? Such terminology is pretty common everywhere from talking about the country being a good player on the world state, a citizen of the world, as if it was an individual, or talking about the country paying its share into one international effort or another.

It's odd that you haven't heard this.

Sign in to participate in the conversation
Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.