Delaware is home to more corporations than people. Human people, that is, as under longstanding state law and the US Supreme Court’s infamous 2010 ruling, corporations are people, too.
A judge in Delaware—a state with more registered business entities than people—ruled Monday in favor of a small town that allows corporations to vote in local elections.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz ruled that the town of Fenwick Island, population 400, did not violate the state Constitution by permitting business entities—which make up 12% of the town’s “population”—to vote in municipal elections, as case plaintiff the ACLU of Delaware had claimed.
“What is a ‘person?’ When one cuts to the heart of this case, that is the question,” Karsnitz wrote to open his 20-page ruling.
Yeah, it’s definitely putting the cart before the horse.
The law defines who can initiate and be subject to legal proceedings, and somewhere in there there’s gotta be the assumption that you must be a person to do so.
So now they’re saying that anyone who can do those things must be a person. It’s circular reasoning.
If we make a law that says cats can now be subject to or initiate legal proceedings, does that make them a person? Or do we need a law that grants them personhood status in order to be subject to or initiate legal proceedings?
Also, this is kind of silly: “a person is anyone or anything that…” (emphasis added).
They’re literally saying right there that a THING can be a person…
If my computer can initiate legal proceedings, does that make it a person?
How can you bar AI agents from initiating legal proceedings on the grounds that it’s not a person, if the deciding factor that determines whether it’s a person is whether it’s capable of initiating legal proceedings?
This is going to open up so many cans of worms…