This is the short section regarding the amendment from Manufacturing Discontent, which Sean Andrews mentioned:
In 1882, the same year that John D. Rockefeller formed his Standard Oil Trust, the Southern Pacific Railroad sued Santa Clara County, California regarding its tax bill. In the course of the proceedings, the railroad proposed that it should be afforded the full rights of an individual on the basis of the 14th amendment. Here, Conkling registered his claim about the original intent of the amendment. In its final decision, the court supposedly granted corporations 14th Amendment rights. In fact, the decision actually said nothing about the 14th amendment; however, the court recorder took it upon himself without any authority to insert the extension of 14th Amendment rights to corporations. Although his words had no legal standing, other courts accepted them as if they were part of the decision, creating a body of precedents that have further reinforced corporate rights (Hartmann 2002, pp. 99-125; Graham 1968). A number of progressive historians lent credence to Conkling's claim that the supposed ruling in the Santa Clara case was exactly what the framers had originally intended. After all, Conkling and others on the congressional committee had been railroad attorneys (Hacker 1940, p. 387; Beard and Beard 1933, pp. 112-13; and Allen 1937, pp. 83-84). Conklin's testimony has not stood up to modern scrutiny. The great jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, forcefully rejected Conkling's interpretation (Fairman 1987, pp. 724-28). Modern historians also bristle at Conkling's "admission (Graham 1938). In fact, Conkling, who by that time was actually in the pay of the railroads, had "resorted to fraud and misquotation" (Graham 1968, p. 17). In the decades that followed, an immense merger wave began to spawn the system of giant corporations that rules society today. The courts ruled time and again that efforts to regulate corporations were unconstitutional on the grounds that such regulations would deny them rights guaranteed to individuals. The amendment was far less successful in promoting its original intent. By 1892, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that, in effect, the Fourteenth Amendment did not grant Blacks the same rights as other citizens. In the words of Barrington Moore: "the Fourteenth Amendment has done precious little to protect Negroes and a tremendous amount to protect corporations" (Moore 1966, p. 149). Another commentator was more specific, observing that "a property minded Supreme Court in the era culminating in Lochner v. New York in 1905, applied the 14th Amendment in ways that denied equality to blacks while developing a highly privatistic version of property rights" (Scheiber 1999, p. 142; see also McCurdy 1975). Just what does it mean to treat corporations as individuals? Although corporations obviously are not human, they can wield enormous power well beyond what any human being could dream. Their charters grant them a possibility of immortality not available to ordinary human beings. A distinguished English jurist of the seventeenth century took a far more realistic view than modern jurisprudence, finding: a corporation ... is invisible, immortal, and rests only in intendment and consideration of the law .... They cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, not excommunicate (sic), for they have no souls, neither can they appear in person, but only by attorney .... A corporation ... is not subject to ... death. [Coke 1612, p. 973] Unfortunately, the law granted an artificial personhood to the corporations. How have modern corporations been able to use their particular version of personhood to stand above the law? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901 www.michaelperelman.wordpress.com
