by The Legal Doctrine That Granted Businesses Constitutional Rights
This nomination for the lawyers and Supreme Court justices who, in the late 19th century, established the doctrine of corporate personhood in American law. The pivotal moment came in the 1886 case *Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad*, where the Court’s headnote (not the decision itself) stated that corporations are “persons” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. This legal fiction allowed businesses to claim constitutional rights (like free speech and due process) originally intended for natural persons. This doctrine profoundly shaped American capitalism, shielding corporations from certain state regulations and empowering them in politics. It proved that the law could evolve to recognize the collective entity of a business as a rights-bearing actor, fundamentally altering the balance of power between corporations, individuals, and the state.
