| Unperson |
1 September 2003
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WorldCom/MCI Faces Criminal Prosecution
The state of Oklahoma has decided to criminally prosecute WorldCom, now MCI, for its alleged defrauding of shareholders. The company has already settled some civil charges, and concern now exists that the new case will damage efforts to bring the company out of bankruptcy. The suit is foolish, not because WorldCom is innocent, nor because it is piling more punishment on the firm, but rather because corporations are not real people but legal fictions. They don't deserve criminal trials.
The officers of WorldCom are facing criminal prosecution, and rightly so. If found guilty, they ought to go away for a long time. But WorldCom as WorldCom can't be thrown in jail. All that can come of this is more fines and restrictions on future business actions. Civil trials can deal with this perfectly well.
The Gordian knot that must be cut here is the Supreme Court decision in 1887's Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, that has been used to claim that corporations have the same rights as natural persons. Corporations are not humans, and therefore, don't have natural rights. They cannot die in battle, they cannot be physically jailed, so why the fiction that they are entitled to rights like free speech, criminal trials, and security of property from searches? Or is it that corporations themselves are a privileged class of legal person somehow superior to flesh and blood citizens?
The people who operate as part of any corporation are already governed by legal codes, both commercial and criminal -- they are entitled to the rights of all humanity and they carry those obligations. To punish shareholders (who are already crime victims) by prosecuting the corporation for the actions of these executives is silly. So is giving individual rights to a group calling itself a legal person.
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