Armstrong Dome, Moonbase Alpha, Colonial Lunar Administration Zone -- 23 Apr. 20547: In a 3-2 decision, the Constitutional Court of Personhood Rights and Definitions has rejected the appeal in the case of Omnicor Hypercorp LLC. & State of Denmark. Writing the majority opinion, the Honourable Judge Pamlin Trimal stated unequivocally that "Corporationbs are not persons under the Armstrong charter, nor do they display any significant quasi-personal attributes deserving of special legal protections beyond those afforded to private property." Of the reasoning behind the appeal, which attempted to leverage the newly installed sapient hive-mind principle, Judge Trimal clarified that "in order for an entity to be classified as a sapient hive-mind, conscious experience and autonomous choices must arise from the rote behaviour of unintelligent autonomous agents which can be thought of as similar to brain cells or integrated circuits. We regret that the court did not make this clear in the cited ruling. Unlike in the case of Mathematical Bees or Forrester's Ants, the autonomous agents put forward by the plaintiff as constituting the potential person, specifically the employees and shareholders of a corporation, are legal persons themselves, with their own rights and responsibilities under the law. As such, any claim that such a collection of persons can be taken as a legal person in itself is subject to the tests for gestalt personhood, which this court has already considered and rejected in the case of limited-liability corporations."
Activist Wilberforce Braunstein, communications director of the corporate watchdog group Fair Dealings, stated in a series of tweets that he is "glad of the ruling, which sends a clear message that despite the hopes of the right-back wing, the highest court is not an extension of the previous administration's policies ... The real victory here is the rejection of even quasi-personality. That was the best hope for the Corporatists, that a corporation would gain protected civil rights and the way would be opened for corps to participate in the Deckard-Bowman test ... The drive for corporate personhood will surely continue. They tried to enshrine it in the Armstrong Convention, and tried again using the splinter persona decision, the personality remix decision, the borganization decision, and the parliamentary neuromorph decision ... they'll try pretty much anything they think has a chance of leading to corporate personhood and civil rights, which adds up in the end to special rights for corporate owners and directors."
No comments:
Post a Comment