That person would be lucky, but not very lucky. It's the whole "snatching victory from the jaws of defeat" angle that makes it.

There's a secret to hiring someone who's lucky. Take half the resumes you get and throw them in the trash, cause you don't want to hire anyone so unlucky. The remaining half are the lucky ones, but if you want to hire someone REALLY lucky, you pull one out of the trash and hire them.

My argument: Citizens United characterized corporations as "associations of citizens" to reach a result that is functionally equivalent to saying corporations have 1A rights so long as they use a third party entity. This holding was not dictated by precedent, and the court consciously rejected an approach that would have adjudicated the question in Citizen's United's favor on narrower grounds without doing violence to the primary purpose of the statute(s) in question.

I believe that a conditional exemption would have been consistent with judicial minimalism, stare decisis, and deference to a coequal branch.

Personally, I think Citizen's United is an intentionally overbroad ruling that's predicated on creating a false choice and erring on the side of our corporate overlords (look at their waiver analysis and tell me it's applied the same way in other cases).

I also think they entirely devalued the interests in actual corruption, perceived corruption, and foreign interference.

That's how I originally thought the court would rule. A decision that permits aggregating small donations while rejecting unlimited donations from for-profit entities was floated by the FEC and explicitly rejected by the court. In other words, SCOTUS explicitly rejected a decision that would allow for your hypo but would restrict unlimited donations from for-profit companies. (Read section II D of the opinion, I don't have pincites).

It's a subtle distinction, but you're right. However, I would say that describing a corporation as an association of natural persons is just a theory of "corporate personhood" by another name.

I don't think there's a functional difference between restricting a sovereign's ability to distinguish between the rights held by natural vs. corporate persons and re-characterizing corporations as associations of natural persons that are entitled to the same rights as it's constituent members.

Edit: although the decision didn't apply directly to for-profit corporation, this only required those entities to establish a subsidiary entity to aggregate donations. It's a distinction without a difference.

Our system is not designed the way you think it should be. There's some variability between different countries, but for the most part every nation adheres to the principles I've outlined. At this point, all I can do is tell you to go to law school or audit torts and corporations so you can raise these points with subject matter experts.

Corporations can be dissolved under certain circumstances, that's effectively what happened to Arthur Anderson after the Enron scandal. 13A bans slavery and involuntary servitude, and 14th amendment applies to persons born or naturalized in the USA, neither of which restricts the ability to own a corporation. Moreover, one doesn't "own" a corporation, but rather one owns shares in the corporation. Corporate personhood is a legal fiction, or at least it was until Citizens United...

Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 481 (1819) arguably marks the beginning of the shift in sentiment. In colonial America, corporate charters were often time limited and required renewal, but the Dartmouth case essentially recognized the possibility that a corporation could be structured to exist in continuity and that subsequent governments could be limited in their ability to revoke a charter unless the original charter said they could. I'm pretty sure "permanent corporations" were not unusual by the late 19th century, but this isn't my area of expertise.

As with most legal questions, the correct answer is "it depends."

For certain purposes, the federal government is a person: U.S. v. The Cooper Corp., (1941).

In some contexts, city/county governments are, but state or federal governments are not because they are sovereigns. Cook County v. U.S. ex rel Chandler, (2003). This actually makes sense because most municipalities are "incorporated" in the sense that they're creatures of state law.

Easier said than done. Who pays for the medical care of people injured by a defective product? The inventor, the manufacturer, or the salesman? Maybe all of them? Maybe someone else? If it's one or more individual, there probably won't be enough money to give all the victims the medical care they need and deserve.

The (main) point of a corporation is to consolidate the risks in one entity, the one who paid those people's salaries and directly profited from the product. In some situations the individuals can be personally responsible too, but that's generally very difficult to establish under the law.

Corporations shouldn't have the same rights as natural persons, but some rights are essential for practical reasons...

Off the top of my head: due process, excessive fines, right to form contracts, right to sue and be sued, right to own property, and right to counsel come to mind. First amendment is tricky, but hopefully we agree that the government shouldn't be able to censor newspapers, publishers or book stores.

Without these rights, corporate entities (including schools and non-profits) would cease to exist, but I think we agree that corporations shouldn't have the same rights as human beings.

Personhood is a legal construct. Its other things too, but the legal construct of personhood is where the rubber hits the road for enforcing rights, duties, privileges, etc.

The article notes several countries that have declared certain animals to be non-human persons, and the notion of corporate person is widely recognized.

If "we" refers to the USA, there isn't the political will to extend these rights to animals such as elephants or primates for many reasons (eg., Voter apathy, special interest groups that use animal testing, zoos, etc.).

Even if one sovereign decided to grant some animals personhood, that wouldn't necessarily be recognized outside that jurisdiction (e.g., two nations, state vs. federal govt.), so they would likely only be a "person" in specific contexts.

People assume that the indeterminate nature of the scientific method is a license to ignore evidence. Anti-science people looooove cherry picking scientists who were mocked at the time who were later vindicated, even though the same people don't appreciate how we know those theorists were ultimately correct (e.g., heliocentrism, germ theory, etc.).

When capitalism had to "compete" against communism as an economic system, there was more pressure to emphasize why capitalism works and is better than the alternative. Without a competing economic system, people assume that capitalism is inherently good without considering which criteria are relevant for such an assessment (other than "capitalism allows me to become rich).

My theory is the GOP is trying to dilute the significance of Trumps impeachment by using it for purely political reasons so they can later claim its a "both sides" thing.

If they side against Krasner, they open the door to the legislature impeaching justices for decisions they don't like. I don't think they're that stupid, but I've been wrong before.

The data here isn't current, and you can only see one year at a time, so it's not a perfect point of comparison but it's the best we have.

I'm sure someone who knows how to code could make a better tool, but that ain't me.

One limitation of the data is that it doesn't tell you the degree of the departure (i.e., 10% below the mitigated range vs. 80% below).

This deviation is pretty substantial, but it's important to realize that if the officer received a longer sentence that he would have had to go to a state facility instead of the Philadelphia jail. It's pretty common for judges to round down to 11.5-23 months to avoid sending someone upstate, which would be even more dangerous for a police officer.

You don't know what you're talking about, and now you're just being a dick rather than justifying your uninformed opinions.

For everyone speculating about what a normal sentence is and how often judges depart from the sentencing guidelines, there's data for that

https://pcs.la.psu.edu/research-data/interactive-data-portal/sentencing-conformity-report/

https://pcs.la.psu.edu/research-data/interactive-data-portal/sentencing-conformity-report/

Why do you feel entitled to assess the qualifications of lawyers without a law degree?

Where did you go to law school?