What's the worst invention of the 21st century?

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corporate personhood.
- That's pre-21st century though.
  
  It’s a bad enough idea we don’t need anymore for the next few centuries.
  
  According to someone else in here, it was 19th, and that sounds right to me. I'm guessing early 19th.
  It's just a neat, tidy legal fiction for some purposes.
  
  it was 2010
  
  Negative. Corporate personhood predates Citizens United v. FCC (which is what I assume you're referring to). IMO: The ruling itself still counts as an answer to the original question though!
- Is that really a 21st century idea? I would have thought that was a reaganomics reform tbh
  
  well citizens united was 21st and encoded it in law.
  
  Speak for yourself American
  
  I bet it effects you more negatively than decisions your country has mad unless your british or not a democracy.
  
  It's a 19th century idea that appeared in the published decision of the Supreme Court in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.
  Only—get this—it wasn't even what the Court decided. Instead, it was the guy in charge of recording the decision for publication who declared "corporate personhood" in the headnote (summary) of the case. And would it surprise you to learn that the guy was the former president of a railroad company? We just sort of went along with this not-precedent until the Citizens United case.
  
  yeah but citizens united codified it into us law.
  
  Not quite. The Santa Clara decision gave corporations equal protection under the 14th Amendment, is law in the same sense that Citizens United is, and has been applied many, many times. The 2010 decision held that 1st Amendment protections apply to corporations.

159 comments