Part I: The Legal Lie

Part I: The Legal Lie

How Corporate Personhood Slowly Broke the World

I’ve always held a firm belief that in a democracy, we, the people, are supposed to be in charge. Yet, over the last 150 years, we’ve mostly missed a silent coup unfold—one that has steadily replaced the citizen with the shareholder, the voter with the lobbyist, and the human being with a legal fiction: the corporation as a person.

To me, this is one of the foundational lies of our time. It’s not a conspiracy theory, but a codified legal illusion, one so deeply embedded in our systems that it now feels normal. But it isn’t. Corporate personhood is an artificial construct, invented and expanded by courts, and it has warped every system it touches—from our food and health to our politics and the environment.

I believe this is the root of the problem. The crises of inequality, climate change, public health, and democracy are all branches of this poisoned tree.

What Is Corporate Personhood, Really?

Originally, corporate personhood was just a mundane legal shortcut. Courts needed a way to treat a company as a single entity so it could enter contracts, own property, and be sued. There was nothing particularly controversial about that.

But over time, this narrow technical idea grew into something far more dangerous: the notion that a corporation—a profit-maximising, immortal, non-human abstraction—should enjoy the same constitutional rights as living, breathing human beings.

Let’s be honest with ourselves: a corporation is not a person. It doesn’t breathe, bleed, or love. It can’t feel shame or suffer. It has no conscience, no memory, no body to bury. It is a structure, not a soul.

And yet, through a series of legal decisions, mostly in the United States, we have allowed this construct to become a super-citizen—one with more rights, more resources, and fewer responsibilities than any one of us.

The Case That Wasn’t a Case: Santa Clara (1886)

The modern myth of corporate personhood begins, fittingly, with a court decision that didn’t actually decide anything. In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), the Supreme Court never officially ruled that corporations were ‘persons’ protected under the 14th Amendment. But the court reporter—a former railroad executive—inserted a misleading note into the case’s summary, stating the Court had affirmed it.

That single sentence—never deliberated, never ruled upon—became a foundational precedent. Subsequent courts simply began treating it as settled law.

By the early 20th century, corporations were successfully arguing they were entitled to protections originally meant for emancipated slaves: equal protection under the law, due process, and the ability to challenge regulations as if they were individual citizens.

Citizens United: Money Talks, Democracy Walks

Fast forward to Citizens United v. FEC (2010)—a ruling that, in my view, cracked the system wide open. The Supreme Court held that corporations had a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertising. In other words, corporate money is considered speech.

If you or I spend $50 on a political ad, it’s speech. If a multinational corporation spends $50 million, it’s also “speech.” But which voice do you think carries more weight?

Citizens United didn’t invent corporate power in politics; it simply legalised its full expression. Since then, billions have poured into elections, shaping everything from climate policy and tax law to food safety regulations.

A handful of unelected, unaccountable executives now have more influence over our lives than most voters ever will.

Australia: Where It’s Even Worse

While the U.S. sets the global template for corporate power, Australia demonstrates what happens when those same dynamics play out with even weaker safeguards. Unlike many democracies, Australia has no federal cap on political donations, no effective real-time disclosure requirements, and minimal restrictions on corporate lobbying.

The result? A political system where mining, fossil fuel, and gambling corporations wield disproportionate power over policy, often directly contradicting the public interest and scientific consensus.

Fossil fuels and mining dominate Australian politics in ways that would make even American oil executives envious. Despite being one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, Australia remains one of the world’s largest coal and gas exporters. Why? Because fossil fuel companies donate millions to both major parties, fund think tanks, and place former executives directly into ministerial offices. When climate policy threatens profits, it simply doesn’t pass—regardless of public support or environmental necessity.

Gambling corporations have achieved a similar stranglehold, particularly through poker machine (pokies) lobbies. Australia has some of the highest rates of gambling losses per capita in the world, with pokies deliberately designed to be addictive. Yet meaningful reform is consistently blocked by industry donations and the revolving door between gambling executives and political advisors. Communities ravaged by gambling addiction are sacrificed to protect corporate revenue.

In both cases, corporate interests don’t just influence policy—they veto it. The Australian system shows what happens when corporate personhood meets weak campaign finance laws: the complete capture of democratic institutions by profit-driven entities with no accountability to the people harmed by their actions.

Why This Is a Problem

When you give corporations the rights of people but none of the constraints of humanity, you create a moral black hole. A human being can go to jail, feel empathy, or be haunted by their conscience. A corporation cannot.

And under current corporate law—particularly in the U.S. and many other neoliberal economies—a corporation’s primary legal obligation is to maximise shareholder value. That’s it.

It is not obligated to:

• Protect public health
• Preserve the environment
• Pay fair wages
• Strengthen communities

Only to deliver returns. If a company can increase profits by cutting safety standards, lobbying against climate regulation, or selling addictive food—it’s not just allowed to do so. It is obligated.

So when we talk about corporate responsibility or ethics, I feel we are mostly engaging in public relations rituals, not creating systemic checks and balances.

From Abstraction to Domination

The ripple effects of corporate personhood have reshaped our world.

• In the food system, corporations design and market ultra-processed, addictive products to maximise consumption, regardless of the health outcomes. Nutrition isn’t profitable; volume is.
• In the health system, corporations profit most when we are perpetually ill. There’s more money in managing diabetes than in preventing it.
• In the political system, corporations fund think tanks, campaigns, and lobbying efforts to block reforms that might cut into profits—even if those reforms are supported by a majority of citizens.

In short, corporate personhood turns democratic systems into extraction machines. And unlike real people, corporations never die, never tire, and never stop expanding.

What Would It Mean to Kill the Corporation?

This doesn’t mean banning all business or destroying commerce. For me, it means revoking the special legal privileges that allow corporations to act as immortal super-citizens.

To “kill the corporation” means:

• Ending constitutional rights for corporations (they are not people).
• Mandating stakeholder governance, not just shareholder primacy.
• Creating real personal and criminal accountability for executives.
• Rewriting charters to require social and environmental benefit.

If corporations want the rights of people, they must also accept the limits and responsibilities of people. Otherwise, we must return them to what they always were: tools for human use.

Conclusion: No Person Without a Soul

Corporate personhood is not just a legal mistake; it is a moral failure. We have endowed a soulless structure with the rights of a person but none of the duties. We’ve allowed it to govern our most vital systems—food, health, media, democracy—without a body to answer for the harm it causes.

And the first step in reclaiming our future is to name the lie.

The corporation is not a person.
It does not deserve your rights.
It cannot serve your society.
And it must never rule your world.