How can anyone know the motivations of the Justices?
> Like many regulations
Isn't it a court decision, not a regulation? Are we all talking about Citizens United?
> This was an effort to protect the economy from being ground to a halt by destructive litigious action and make courts more efficient.
Is there evidence that such a thing was at risk of happening? I know industry advocates commonly make the claim, but I haven't seen evidence.
IIRC, the court decision was to enable corporations to make political contributions based on their free speech rights as 'people'. How does that serve the purposes quoted above?
No. He's probably talking about the establishment of corporations by the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1844[1], or its American equivalent.
Citizens United did not invent corporate personhood. That dates back to when the concept of a corporation was first established.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Stock_Companies_Act_1844
That has been the result, however.
Just because you can point out the current system's flaws doesn't automatically mean a comparable better one exists.
Plenty of systems in our economy and legal system are a matter of lesser-of-evils. It's easy to complain but unless you can propose a better alternative, an alternative that won't end up being worse for the poor/middle class average person, then you aren't really helping the situation.
This disconnect from the on-the-ground reality is one of the big reasons I don't support many of these populist activist causes... and yes I've seen "The Corporation" film many times.
The flip side of the coin is we should never stop looking for improvements. IMO if executives were held personally liable for gross negligence, for instance, they would suddenly become more interested in things like security best practices (referring to the recent Equifax disaster).
This was an effort to protect the economy from being ground to a halt by destructive litigious action and make courts more efficient. Not to increase liability and accountability within the corporation. Which is why nearly every western country has done the same... it wasn't a conspiracy to protect wealthy people from being punished.
Like many regulations that fail to affect idealistic change, it was done with good intentions and there hasn't been a strong enough support for an alternative to solve this issue... or, less likely, maybe no rational alternatives really do exist.
The simple fact is shit rolls down hill in all big organizations and I'm not convinced it won't happen if corporations weren't singular legal entities. Top tier executives have a way of protecting themselves, while the lower staff tend not to have such protections.
Removing this 'corporations = people' legal structure would incentivize internal deflection to lower levels as a legal strategy instead of the company uniformly fighting back against allegations - making it risky to be a low-level manager and highly disincentivizing employees from taking any real responsibility that would involve legal exposure (aka a huge percentage of management and entrepreneurial jobs).
Ultimately, the tough reality is that it might actually make sense to treat the company as a singular whole, as potentially there are hundreds of people involved in any major corporate incident. Which would be a nightmare in the bureaucratic mess that is the modern justice system.
That said, I'm not 100% convinced that courts can't use common sense to figure out direct liability and involvement within the company, at an individual level. But common sense has never been something the courts or government policy have been known for, at least in the last half-century. The modern justice system has entirely been modeled around the lowest common denominator. Which is very apparent if you've ever tried to challenge something as simple as a traffic ticket in court.
Given that legal/regulatory environment which it currently exists within I could see such a change being abused and being massively inefficient. Especially considering how difficult it is to prove a single persons involvement in a normal crime, let alone trying to sue a company then figuring out 100 individuals culpability...