In Kiobel v.
Royal Dutch Petroleum, the U.S. Supreme Court waded into the murky waters of
corporate legal personhood, at least potentially, in hearing oral arguments in
late February 2012. The issue in the case is whether corporations can be held
liable to the extent that they are complicit in a foreign government’s human
rights abuses. Legal personhood would say that they could be. This would
represent an obligation that goes with legal personhood. The question is
whether the justices who conferred in the Citizens
United decision the right of corporations, based on their legal personhood,
to make unlimited political donations would also be willing to view obligations
as “part and parcel” with such personhood. If not, then legal persons, unlike
human persons, would have the benefits of personhood without any of the
obligations—an oxymoron to corporations to be sure. In other words, such an asymmetry
would render the legal personhood doctrine itself as akin to a one-sided coin—which
cannot exist, let alone stand.
The full essay is at "Corporate Legal Personhood."
