Why and how are corporations “people”?
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Corporations exist to provide a legal entity to protect people from the risks associated with running a business or group, and to streamline the decisionmaking process. For example, if you have a business run with shared property, you effectively need the permission of every single person in that business in order to do something like sign or negotiate a contract or whatever. Instead, the law allows you to create a legal entity separate from the people who own/run the business to serve as a surrogate person for these kinds of situations, thus that surrogate person is afforded some of the rights that normally would only be afforded to people. The debate over corporate personhood is mainly just the legal debate over how many and what kind of rights are given over to corporations. However, the core concept is extremely old, particularly in legal systems that descend from the Common Law system of the British Empire.
The sticking point these days is corporate speech, and whether or not that right is/should be afforded to corporations.
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