Edward Coke Quotes
It is a fiction, a shade, a nonentity, but a reality for legal purposes. A corporation aggregate is only in abstracto—it is invisible, immortal, and rests only in intendment and consideration of the law.
Coke, Edward. The Reports of Sir Edward Coke, Knt: In Thirteen Parts, Vol. 5, Part 10. Joseph Butterworth and Son, 1826, p. 32b.
A constant major issue in industrial democracies are the perceptions, rights and responsibilities of corporations. For those like Romney, corporations should have all the privileges, empathy, rights and obligations of individual people. To most others a corporation is morally and practically a different entity. See {586119}.
Romney was trying to explain that the Supreme Court had recently ruled that for purposes of placing limits on campaign donations, corporations were entitled to the same rights of free speech and contributing money as people. The candidate chose this statement to express that view. However, the way Romney phrased it made many people suspect that perhaps, because of his lifetime corporate activity, he really thought that there were no differences between corporations and people. This suspicion reinforced a public feeling that Romney was much more corporately oriented than he was people oriented, and that hurt Romney with many voters.
McCain held this view despite the fact that most other politicians of his party supported removal of any corporate restraints.
The state of Texas had an enthusiasm for executions that was greater than and different from all the other states. Their execution numbers were closer to Iran and China than they were to other American states. The Supreme Court had ruled that corporations were people for purposes of being entitled to freedom of speech.
This issue arose in 2014 with the Citizens United Case, when a 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court held that political contributions were a form of political speech and corporations had the right of Freedom of Speech. This time there were 4 dissenters.
This quotation is a good example of the hair splitting that is often required in deciding constitutional law.
Sir Edward Coke SL was an English barrister, judge, and politician who is considered to be the greatest jurist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras.
