in this case chief justice wait explicitly told the lawyers for the southern pacific railroad that his court would not rule on the issue of corporate personhood and they ought to move on with their arguments but a year later the chief justice was mortally hill with congestive heart failure after the case was decided and the case as i said was not did not decide the corporations have rights as persons and the court reporter j.c. bancroft davis was a very wealthy and powerful man some of the former governor of massachusetts former president of the new newburgh and new york railroad and apparently good buddies with all the other railroad billionaires keep in mind at that time these guys were the bill gates's of their day they were literally the richest woman in the world. now one of the things that supreme court reporters do in addition to chronicling the case is to write a cliff notes version of the case this short summary has no legal standing whatsoever it's just there to make it easier for lawyers to find in the future when they're looking for a case it's called ahead but bizarrely in

ok senator on whether or not to the corporation the southern pacific railroad owed santa clara money six years worth of unpaid property taxes again it just all really monday and stuff ultimately the court let stand a lower california court decision because they said it was the state of california is issue not a federal issue case closed not a constitutional debate you can read on line in the web's the supreme court itself nothing there about corporations being able to elect governors but here's where everything went a little crazy as one of its six defenses in the case the southern pacific railroad made an unusual argument they tried to argue that personhood rights under the fourteenth amendment passed just twenty years earlier after the civil war to grant slaves full citizenship and equal protection under the law but those rights should also apply to corporations why because corporations had always been called artificial persons under the law all humans had always been called natural persons and the fourteenth amendment only says to any person so the railroad said had to tax them di

anything new in america since that fateful supreme court case in eight hundred eighty six southern pacific railroad versus santa clara county where the court reporter decided to take it upon himself to say that corporations are people and they should be granted all the same rights as people despite the fact that the supreme court had actually ruled the exact opposite corporations have staked a claim to more and more rights that used to be reserved just for actual living and breathing people including the first amendment right to free speech the fourth amendment right to privacy the fourteenth amendment right to equal protection under the law meanwhile women and minorities actual people have seen their rights steadily taken away in eight hundred fifty six and the dred scott case the supreme court ruled that people african-americans in this case are property that decision led directly to the civil war after which the thirteenth fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were passed history of slavery out of the constitution and guarantee equal rights for everybody except women. during that same era in the b

should have them all and in eight hundred eighty six in the case of santa clara county vs southern pacific railroad the supreme court seemed to agree with this argument but the truth we now know is that the court's decision was actually changed by a court reporter and the court never really did give corporations rights as persons still the idea struck stark excuse me because that same corrupt court reporter since then a corporate person an entity that is not born does not die is neither male nor female doesn't need safe water or clean food cannot be put in prison it enjoys many of the same constitutional rights that you and i do exists there now a super purse. and this idea of corporations as people lay mostly quiet until the one nine hundred seventy s. when american corporations began to push in front of the supreme court with decisions like buckley versus vallejo in first national bank versus bloddy decisions that essentially expanded the rights of corporations based on the idea that they were persons but it wasn't until january of two thousand and ten last year that the supreme court really blew