7.2 Huber
Wm. Dennis Huber. (2018). Law, language, and Corporatehood: Corporations and the U.S. Constitution. International Journal of Law, Language & Discourse 7(2), 29-61.
Abstract: The discourse regarding the status and standing of corporations vis-à-vis the Constitution has consistently been misdirected by the Supreme Court. The issue that has caused so much consternation concerns whether a corporation is a “person.” The reason the discourse regarding the status and standing of corporations vis-à-vis the Constitution has been misdirected is the consequence of the very nature of the question: “is a corporation a person in the constitution?” The question preconditions the answer with the fundamental assumption that the discourse can take place using person-centered terms. To ask whether a corporation is a “person” in the Constitution places the cart before the horse. Before the question whether a corporation is a “person” in the Constitution is asked, the question “what is a person in the Constitution” must first be asked and answered. This paper asks the question that must be asked first, “what is a person in the Constitution,” and answers the question using a critical linguistic analysis and exegesis of “person” in the Constitution as a whole and the canons of statutory and Constitutional interpretation adopted by the Supreme Court. While the Supreme Court has analyzed whether a corporation is a “person” in the Constitution, it has done so on a piecemeal basis. In cases in which the Supreme Court has ruled that a corporation is a “person” in the Constitution, it has disregarded, twisted, and distorted the basic rules of English grammar and syntax and its own canons of statutory and Constitutional interpretation. This paper recommends argues that the terms “corporate person” and “corporate personhood” be abandoned because they are, grammatically and syntactically, nonsense.
Keywords: legal translation, legal terminology, legal settings, walking on thin ice, the Constitution
Category: 2018
