[5] THIS AMENDMENT ENSHRINES THE SANCTITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND ESTABLISHES THE PRESUMPTION THAT INDIVIDUALS ARE ENTITLED TO A GREATER MEASURE OF CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS THAN CORPORATIONS - FOR PURPOSES OF THE FOREGOING AMENDMENTS, CORPORATIONS ARE NOT CONSIDERED "PERSONS," NOR ARE THEY ENTITLED TO THE SAME BILL OF RIGHTS PROTECTIONS AS INDIVIDUALS - SUCH PROTECTIONS MAY ONLY BE CONFERRED BY STATE LEGISLATURES OR IN POPULAR REFERENDA
- the second reform - allowing for revocation of the corporate charter - would permit corporations to mold their behavior in response to a real threat of capital punishment, counterbalancing the short-term need to externalize costs and make a profit - charter revocation spells corporate death - such a threat would give everyone in the corporation an enormous incentive to check corporate crimes and harms before they got out of hand.
outfitting corporations with a perpetual threat of death would concentrate the minds of management, shareholders and workers wonderfully, providing a strong, continuing incentive for ethical behavior - such a perpetual threat would humanize and civilize the corporate form, which in recent years has arguably emerged as our most rogue and dangerous institution.
-- [excerpts 1-6] [based on Peter Montague, Ph.D., RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #388 May 5, 1994]
[1] Lester R. Brown and others, STATE OF THE WORLD 1994 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994); Lester R. Brown and others, VITAL SIGNS 1993 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993).
[2] Robert A.G. Monks and Nell Minow, POWER AND ACCOUNTABILITY (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), pg. 24.
[3] Richard Grossman and Frank T. Adams, TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS; CITIZENSHIP AND THE CHARTER OF INCORPORATION (Cambridge, Mass.: Charter, Inc., 1992).
[4] For 50 ways to reform corporations see Russell Mokhiber, CORPORATE CRIME AND VIOLENCE (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988), pgs. 38-65.
[5] Carl J. Mayer, "Personalizing the Impersonal: Corporations and the Bill of Rights," HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL Vol. 41 No. 3 (March 1990), pgs. 577-667.
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