I think you are interpreting "legal personhood" in a manner that is incorrect.
"Legal personhood" means that the corporate entity is a legal person in the matter of contracts and lawsuits. The "person" of the corporation is just a facade (in the design patterns sense) which provides useful simplifications in contracts and lawsuits.
You could completely replace corporate personhood with contract law. You would just have 10,000 page contracts that would specify the liability of each individual shareholders is limited to X, a lawsuit must target all shareholders and damages/debts are limited to Y, etc. Basically, each contract would reproduce corporate law.
Then whenever you wanted to collect a debt or sue the company, you'd need to dig into the contract to figure out how.
Instead, we've created a useful simplification/standardization: you say "Company X owes me $50,000", and it's up to Company X to figure out internally how to deal with this. It's also standardized to a few specific forms (LLCs, LLPs, S-Corps, C-corps, etc).
That's all corporate personhood is. A corporation has no inherent rights except those rights granted it by it's shareholders. Similarly, your computer has no rights, but that doesn't mean the government can pass a law saying "your computer may not criticize Obama." Such a law doesn't violate your computers rights, it violates your rights.
Similarly, laws against political speech violate the rights of the owners of the corporation who are ordinary flesh and blood people (as opposed to legal facades to simplify lawsuits and contracts).
First, thanks for the specifics on "legal personhood". Definitely helpful for me.
I do not believe that restrictions on corporations violate the individual rights of the owners. Aren't the owners are allowed to participate in politics individually, just as every citizen can?
Restrictions on corporations prevent the owners from using some of their property to participate in politics.
Similarly, computers aren't people. So does a restriction on "speech by computers" violate your rights? I.e., a law saying "you can't use your computer to advocate for or against the election of a politician?"
I understand this line of thinking, but I think it oversimplifies the issue. Some companies have a market cap larger than a small country. Some companies sell weapons to foreign militaries. Tools of different power need different laws governing them. I think the fact we restrict the political speech of federal employees (example: public school teachers) reflects this idea. Are you suggesting the same laws that apply to a pen that Larry Page owns should apply to the Google home page?
We don't restrict the political speech of federal employees except when they are at work. Public school teachers are free to advocate for anything they want and donate their pay to all sorts of causes.
In 2008, teachers were the largest group of political speakers nationwide, and contributed $13 million more to political causes than the largest corporation (the Penn National Gaming company). In general, government employees contribute more money to politics than corporations. In fact, in the list of the top 10 political contributors, there are 2 corporations (both gambling), 2 unions, 4 indian tribes, realtors, and a left wing PAC.
And yes, I do suggest that freedom of speech should apply to all speech, even speech that is heard by millions of people. Similarly, the same laws on vocal speech should apply to me and to Oprah, in spite of the fact that vastly more people will hear and be persuaded by her.
"Legal personhood" means that the corporate entity is a legal person in the matter of contracts and lawsuits. The "person" of the corporation is just a facade (in the design patterns sense) which provides useful simplifications in contracts and lawsuits.
You could completely replace corporate personhood with contract law. You would just have 10,000 page contracts that would specify the liability of each individual shareholders is limited to X, a lawsuit must target all shareholders and damages/debts are limited to Y, etc. Basically, each contract would reproduce corporate law.
Then whenever you wanted to collect a debt or sue the company, you'd need to dig into the contract to figure out how.
Instead, we've created a useful simplification/standardization: you say "Company X owes me $50,000", and it's up to Company X to figure out internally how to deal with this. It's also standardized to a few specific forms (LLCs, LLPs, S-Corps, C-corps, etc).
That's all corporate personhood is. A corporation has no inherent rights except those rights granted it by it's shareholders. Similarly, your computer has no rights, but that doesn't mean the government can pass a law saying "your computer may not criticize Obama." Such a law doesn't violate your computers rights, it violates your rights.
Similarly, laws against political speech violate the rights of the owners of the corporation who are ordinary flesh and blood people (as opposed to legal facades to simplify lawsuits and contracts).