Corporations Having Individual Rights

excerpt from Paul Hawken's "Ecology of Commerce."

The Civil War had transferred great amounts of wealth to corporations, and with this concentration of power they began to clamor for "equal rights" and new simplified chartering laws that would treat every corporation equally. (This is the means of incorporation we have today: anyone can do it, and for a nominal fee.)

There quickly followed a wholesale reinterpretation of the Constitution by the judiciary, granting new powers and rights to corporations. The primary thrust behind these precedents was the "due process" clause of the Fourteenth Ammendment. This amendment protected the rights of freed slaves, but it was subsequently interpreted to give corporations the same status before the law as that of a natural person. On that basis, judges reversed hundreds if not thousands of state laws controlling wages, working conditions, ownership and corporate tenure.