Corporate personhood

Corporate personhood is the legal treatment of a corporation as an entity distinct from its owners, able to hold specified rights and responsibilities. Its scope varies by legal system and context.

Juristic person: A nonhuman entity that the law recognizes as capable of holding rights or duties. Corporate personhood is one form of legal recognition for entities that are not human beings.
Corporate governance: The structures and processes through which corporations are directed, controlled, and held accountable. Governance rules determine who may exercise a corporation’s legal powers.
Natural person: A human being recognized as a person by law. Unlike a natural person, a corporation has only those rights and duties applicable to an artificial entity.
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.: An 1886 United States Supreme Court case concerning taxation of a railroad corporation. The case is often cited in debates over corporate constitutional rights, though its opinion did not decide that question.
Separate legal personality: The principle that an organization has a legal identity distinct from its members. This separation lets a corporation hold assets and obligations in its own name.
Corporate law: The body of law governing the formation, operation, and dissolution of corporations. It supplies the legal framework that creates corporate entities and defines their capacities.
Corporate sovereignty: The idea that corporations exercise public-like power beyond effective democratic or governmental control. This critique concerns corporate power, not the narrower legal attribution of personhood.
Citizens United v. FEC: A 2010 United States Supreme Court decision invalidating restrictions on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions. It applied First Amendment protection to corporate political spending, a prominent modern personhood dispute.
Limited liability: A rule limiting investors’ responsibility for an organization’s debts to specified amounts, usually their investment. It is a consequence of treating corporate debts as distinct from shareholders’ personal debts.
Agency law: The law governing relationships in which one person acts on behalf of another. Agents’ acts can become the acts of a corporation when they act within their authority.

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