Citizens United and the Justice of Juridic Personality

Corporations are persons under the US Constitution according to the rulings of its authentic interpreter, the US Supreme Court.

Many have deplored what they see as a new development in the Citizens United decision; they object to the legal fiction of juridic personality and consider it improper to impart personhood to a corporation.

While their objection should be debated, the notion that juridic personality is a novel doctrine of SCOTUS alone is historically unfounded; Canon Law and the continental Civil Law it influenced have had the doctrine of juridic personality for centuries. While its incorporation into American Common Law is less explicitly in terms of "personality", both law and the courts have recognized corporate entities as having separate legal status (juridic personality) from those human persons (physical/natural personality) constituting the corporate whole. Hence corporations pay taxes, can be held accountable for crimes, and can exercise free speech wholly apart from those physical persons directing the corporation.

To the objection of impropriety in attributing personality to juridically-constituted corporate entities: If we are to strip corporations of their personhood, in justice we must thereby strip them of their pecuniary obligations under tax law. SCOTUS has already incorporated corporations under the Bill of Rights, and corporations have corresponding duties, such as paying taxes. For every duty, there is a right (cf. J. Koterski). Consequently, for the duty of paying taxes we acknowledge the right of free speech. If the right is suppressed, in justice the duty must be removed. The abrogation of the corporate tax is something I doubt anyone would seriously consider.