Series Nº 16236 – People are Corporations too

Few Americans understand the importance of the 1886 Supreme Court decision in the obscure case of the County of Santa Clara, California versus the Southern Pacific Railroad Company (118 US 394).

At least: not the decision itself, but the introduction that the Court Reporter added on publication. It recognized that American citizens were entitled to some of the same rights and privileges that US corporations had always enjoyed – and it fundamentally changed the course of the nation’s history.

Today, American citizens still don’t enjoy all the rights of corporations. Perhaps some of us will live to see full equality under the law. It may sound like a lofty ambition, but the course of American justice always prevails in the long run….

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