When a corporation is the registered keeper of a motor vehicle, and fails to identify the driver, it most certainly does end up paying their parking tickets. I've even seen one endorsed with penalty points after failing to identify an alleged speeder. The advantage for the driver involved is, of course that a corporation can not drive and therefore isn't too concerned about being disqualified.

Corporations can be convicted of any offence, except one with a mandatory sentence of imprisonment (ie murder, piracy on the high seas, high treason and causing a nuclear weapons explosion). It could be argued that if a corporation were to be convicted of one of the above offences, the shareholders should be imprisoned, however that goes against the idea of limited liability a bit, and and in any event the shareholders may well be corporations themselves.

I like the idea of corporate probation for some offences ie the directors and supervised by a court appointed officer until they mend their ways), and a corporate death penalty (ie dissolution) for extremely serious offences.

"Personality" vs "Personhood"

We need to understand the "creep" which led from the initial ruiling that corporations had a right to their "personality" (legal term, refers to their existence and being able to sue or be sued in their own name) toward accretion of other rights of persons.

In many ways the original ruling (Dartmouth vs New Hampshire) was an attempt to expand a RIGHT to personality (once in existence) for all corporations including business ones. Earlier (business) corporations were seen as special creations of the state, individually granted a charter which the state might later revoke. It should be noted that Dartmouth was another sort of corporate body and the court could have ruled more narrowly when it decided that New Hampshire could not seize* Dartmouth (could perhaps "condemn" the college's physical property but the school, it's name and right to confer degrees could pick up and move elsewhere). In other words, Dartmouth had a right to its "personality". Note however that at the time a university wasn't seen as a "business" but as a self governing freehold of its faculty. We should note that there other sorts of corporations besides business corporations, a town for example.

We need to be clear about this fight. It shouldn't be about stripping corporations of ALL the rights of personhood but instead be about eliminating the "creep" from just those elements which make sense for them to have instead of all the rights of persons.


*New Hampsire wanted a state university and rather than try to create one, decided it could just confiscate Dartmouth (originally a college for American Indians)