Woah. Okay, let me see here.
First: I concede my point about kittens. I forgot that the federal government doesn't have any animal cruelty laws.
I'm sticking to my guns on "wildlife conservation", though. Congress has the power to legislate in order to "provide for... the general welfare of the United States", and I would hate to try and justify, say, the national parks system with that clause if it instead read "the general welfare of
the living people of the United States".
While we're at it, does anybody have any issue with the federal government being prohibited from protecting the rights of dead people?
Honestly, the more I read this thing, the more it sounds like a terrible phrasing of a suspiciously radical concept to begin with. I would imagine that 'A corporation is not a person and does not possess any of the rights which are otherwise exclusive to people" would rock the boat enough.
Well, for starters, you have to define "otherwise exclusive to people". The bit I quoted specifically alluded to rights granted in the Constitution.
Good point. There's actually a fairly large category of abstract legally-recognized institutions which you'd also have to consider - non-profit organizations and organized religions spring to mind. But it would also be inadequate to simply list the rights they
do have, for much the same reason that it's inadequate to list the rights that
people have. You'd probably have to block out generalized chunks of rights - absence of free speech is probably the most important one there.
What we actually want is for corporations to not have certain rights and abilities that would otherwise be the sole domain of individual people and governments - but (I assume) we want some of those things to remain. The ability to sue and be sued, for example.
I'm not sure that qualifies as constitutional either. Which is precisely the point -- yes, corporations are covered by laws, and yes, they behave as proxies for groups of people. But that doesn't mean they deserve the rights of individual people.
I think you're confused about the specifics of the proposal -- it refers only to rights, and only to those in the Constitution. There's an entire body of US law that's separate from the Constitution itself.
Or the ability to have money and property. (Physical, not intellectual.)
Now see, I'm about as pro-individual and anti-corporate a guy as you'll find here when it comes to the subject of copyrights, patents, and trademarks, but saying corporations shouldn't be able to have them at ALL is, to say the least, problematic. I WOULD argue that corporate ownership should be weakened and individual ownership strengthened, but if corporations can't own ideas, well, they're going to stop investing in them.
Wait.
There's an entire body of US law that's separate from the Constitution itself.
The entire body of US law is permitted to exist by the Constitution, but the Constitution lays down parameters for what US law can legislate; thanks to the 10th amendment, US law that's separate from the Constitution is, by definition, unconstitutional. The constitution is at the top of the pyramid for all federal legislation.
I'm assuming that the ability of corporations to participate in legal cases falls within the purview of "general welfare". (I essentially read "provide for the general welfare" to mean "make things happen if they are A Good Thing.")
My suggestion that corporations should not be able to own IP was, I think based on the perhaps overly optimistic idea that, if corporations couldn't own IP, they'd just have to make sure that the individuals who owned that IP continued to be on their payroll and continued to be happy to grant that corporation the use of that IP. Creator's rights sort of fing.
To return to the original proposal: I think Section 1 and Section 2 are unnecessary at best and potentially damaging at worst. Section 3 has a good idea but the wording is much too specific; probably better to permit Congress to restrict the free speech of whatever broad category of institution we decide we're talking about. (I could see arguments for churches not being in that list, for example.) I have no particular issues with Section 4.