Corporations Rights

Corporations should have rights which natural persons enjoy. The rights though should be based

on the characteristics of corporations. Corporations should be treated in law like any other

person. Legal personality acquired by corporations on incorporation should give facilitate the

enjoyment of rights enjoyed normally by natural persons only.

Such rights as to be enjoyed by artificial persons include right to own property, right to sue and

be sued, right to enter into contracts. Such privileges which under normal circumstances enjoyed

by natural persons enable corporations to come into existence as independent persons.

The independence which corporations have require certain rights to be granted so as to enable

them to fully perform certain activities. Corporations are normally independent from owners and

it will be difficult for such corporations to act if not granted rights similar to those which natural

persons have.

Without such rights corporations would be useless and would not even exist. With the

modernization corporations are a common feature in all economies and it is only prudent for

corporations to be granted certain rights to make them act smoothly.

Extent of Rights

Rights should only serve to enable corporations perform their activities effectively. The legal

personality enjoyed by corporations should not be mistaken by corporations to mean that they

have all the rights and privileges enjoyed by natural persons. The legal personality of

corporations should not guarantee corporations all rights enjoyed by natural persons.
Corporations should not act fully like natural persons because the rights granted do not make

them natural persons but they rather give them a privilege to do certain activities normally done

by natural persons.

In conclusion, any corporation should act within the limits given by law and it should use its

legal personality for the purposes for which it was granted. Furthermore, corporations should not

compare themselves with natural persons in for example in terms of taxes they pay because they

are not natural persons and are only granted rights to allow for their independence from natural

persons.
 References

Clements, J. D. (2012). Corporations are not people: Why they have more rights than you do

and what you can do about it. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Emberland, M. (2006). The human rights of companies: Exploring the structure of ECHR

protection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hartmann, T. (2010). Unequal protection: How corporations became "people"--and you can

fight back. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

In Benson, P., In Kirsch, S., & American Anthropological Association. (2014). Imagining

corporate personhood. (Political and legal anthropology review, 37.