I’ve heard this about the US but never had it explained to me. What does it mean and are there any examples of this happening I can look into?
In: Economics
This specifically gets brought up in context of corporations being “people” for certain legal purposes.
Essentially, treating them as “persons” means that they automatically have some of the same constitutional protections as individuals.
A lot of people get upset with this, because they think it lets corporations meddle in (for example) politics with fewer restrictions, do things that might be viewed as discrimination for an organization but not a person, or not get punished as severely as they could be if they didn’t have those protections.
Although usually, they only get worked up if the “bad” corporations they personally don’t like are getting away with things they disapprove of and give others a pass, and don’t realize (or ignore that fact) that a lot of things (including their favorite media outlets telling them what to think) are also corporations.
Burwell vs Hobby Lobby is recent and really famous/infamous example.
Obviously, like any legal concept, it can be abused, but at the same time, corporations are just groups of people, so it’s not entirely outlandish to say that people shouldn’t lose certain rights just because they’re working together as a business entity…
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