To put this corporations are people nonsense to rest...
Corporations are people in the sense that they are protected from the States under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, and they have the right to enforce contracts and sue in the courts.
THAT'S IT.
What's the fuss? Fuss for fuss' sake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
Corporations as persons in the United States[edit]
As a matter of interpretation of the word "person" in the
Fourteenth Amendment, U.S. courts have extended certain constitutional protections to corporations. Opponents of corporate
personhood seek to amend the U.S. Constitution to limit these rights to those provided by state law and state constitutions.
[5][6]
The basis for allowing corporations to assert protection under the
U.S. Constitution is that they are organizations of people, and the people should not be deprived of their constitutional rights when they act collectively.
[7] In this view, treating corporations as "persons" is a convenient
legal fiction which allows corporations to sue and to be sued, provides a single entity for easier taxation and regulation, simplifies complex transactions that would otherwise involve, in the case of large corporations, thousands of people, and protects the individual rights of the shareholders as well as the
right of association.
Generally, corporations are not able to claim constitutional protections that would not otherwise be available to persons acting as a group. For example, the Supreme Court has not recognized a
Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination for a corporation, since the right can be exercised only on an individual basis. In
United States v. Sourapas and Crest Beverage Company, "[a]ppellants [suggested] the use of the word 'taxpayer' several times in the regulations requires the fifth-amendment self-incrimination warning be given to a corporation." The Court did not agree.
[8]
Since the Supreme Court's ruling in
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, upholding the rights of corporations to make political expenditures under the First Amendment, there have been several calls for a U.S. Constitutional amendment to abolish Corporate Personhood,
[9] even though the Citizens United majority opinion makes no reference to corporate personhood or to the Fourteenth Amendment.
[10]
