Metaphor 1: The Corporation as a “person”

Author and reporter William Greider describes the development of corporate “personalities”:

“ The great project of corporate lawyers, extending over generations, has been to establish full citizenship for their business organizations. They argue that their companies are entitled to the same political rights, save voting, that the Constitution guarantees to people. In 1886 the Supreme Court declared, without hearing arguments, that corporations would henceforth be considered “persons” for purposes of the 14th Amendment, the “due process” amendment that was established to protect the newly emancipated black slaves after the Civil War. Fifty years later, justice Hugo Black reviewed the Supreme Court's many decisions applying the 14th Amendment and observed that less than one half of one percent invoked it in protection of the Negro ....