Civil society activists refer to these data in arguing that the grant of corporate personhood poses many risks and a distinct danger. (1) What are these risks and what is this danger? (2) How does the combination of economic influence and political power pose a near insurmountable challenge for the regulation of large multinational corporations? (3) What are some other ways to conceive of corporate power? (4) What role does corporate power play in the exercise of corporate social responsibility, particularly in transitional or emerging economies?
1) Over the past 150 years, federal court rulings have gradually granted corporations protections under the constitutional amendments contained in the Bill of Rights. Those rulings have granted corporations the 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech, 4th Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure, 5th Amendment protection from self-incrimination, and 14th Amendment rights to equal protection under the law. Corporations have used their 1st Amendment freedom of speech right to contribute to political campaigns, speak at public forums, and to maintain silence about their environmental practices. They have used their 4th Amendment right to protect their facilities from being searched. They can use the 5th Amendment to protect them from producing internal communications. Corporations have used the 14th Amendment more times than those seeking the racial equality it was written to provide.
These "special advantages" include the ability to amass "large treasuries" and "immense aggregations of wealth." What is wrong with immense aggregations of wealth? Isn't that the American way: rags to riches? The problem is that in the corporate world those who hold the wealth (stockholders) do little to create it, wh ...