A long time ago, before the dawn of the 21st Century, and even before the dawn of the 20th Century, corporations were understood to be artificial creations, created by individuals and registered by the states as entities. This was a long standing idea, that held for centuries. Even at the dawn of the corporate era, it was understood that this was a means of financing a group effort as part of the economic development of the world…..
In the 21st Century, a movement, called the pro-life movement, gained influence and power. Using an obscure footnote from an old court decision, they breathed life into the corporate structure and suddenly the pro-life movement had created thousands of new “people.” What a victory!
Now that we have a new class of personhood in our country, we need to take a look at how these new persons operate. After all, people in this country have many rights, but they also have responsibilities that include consequences for various actions. For example, many states and the federal government have a penalty for murder that is called “execution.” In this penalty, a person that is guilty of a “capital” crime has his/her life forfeit, and is killed. Since corporations are people, if a corporation commits or causes to commit a capital offense, the corporation itself then should be subject to the same penalties as other “people.” The execution of a corporation would look somewhat different from that of a biological entity, such as a human being, but it could be imposed by, say, disassembling the corporation, selling off its assets, and perhaps even having the results of the sale of assets forfeit. After all, the investors in the corporation that is found guilty of a capital offense should not benefit from the corporate wrongdoing.
There are, of course, many offenses that are much smaller than capital offenses. Take, for example, fraud. The kinds of sophisticated schemes that some corporations have been accused of, would generally land a biological person in prison for as much as 14 years. That person would generally be ordered to pay a fine and restitution to the victims of that fraud. Currently non-biological persons like corporations (I say this because we do not know what other kinds of entities the Supreme Court is going to giver personhood to) usually get off with a fine, and perhaps restitution, although I have not seen restitution given to the victims of the housing fraud scandal. And we cannot put a non-biological entity in prison. Sometimes a CEO or other corporate officer gets stuck with a prison sentence, but that is not punishing the corporation. So I propose that corporations that commit fraud should, in addition to the fines and the restitution should be given sentences that are commensurate with the severity of the crime. Consider the possibility of house arrest. We could freeze the corporate assets and put the corporation under house arrest by not allowing it to carry on any activities for the period prescribed by law for the punishment. So for example, if Bank of America were to commit fraud (God forbid!) then the corporate assets need to be frozen, the monies of the customers would be returned to them, the victims would receive restitution, and the corporation would be prohibited from carrying on business for a period of time to be determined by a judge.
You might think that this is extreme, but consider that a biological person has his auto impounded when he is caught drunk driving, and may have his license revoked for a period of time. My proposal is similar.
Finally, a word about the biological persons who run the corporations. If their corporation is found guilty of a crime of a felony nature, they should, of course, be removed from their positions (this includes officers and boards of directors). They should be prohibited from holding any such position in the corporation in the future, and should be prohibited from holding such position in any corporation for the same “house arrest” period that has been imposed on the corporation.
Thanks for reading this proposal.
