Corporate personhood is when corporations are treated liked people in the eyes of the law. Under this idea, corporations have the right to support certain political candidates or not follow mandates that oppose religious beliefs of the company. The idea gets tricky, though, because “corporation” is a very general term. A small Catholic parish and Coca-Cola are both technically “corporations.” Thus, the court must determine how to treat these “corporations” under the federal law. Not until 2010 have corporations been able to voice opinions about political candidates. People against corporate personhood say that individuals are freely allowed to support candidates and shouldn’t need corporations to express individual thoughts. Others argue that nonprofit and profit corporations should be treated differently by the law. According to Nina Totenberg in her article When Did Companies Become People? Evacuating the Legal Evolution, “The court has said that because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, the First Amendment forbids discrimination against any class of speaker.” A corporation is a group of people, so under the idea of corporate personhood, the company should be allowed to openly voice opinions like any individual would be able to do. However, corporations are so large that it is impossible that every person in the corporation would agree on certain views or political candidates. Therefore, the few number of people at the top of the corporation would end up making controversial statements in the name of the entire company.
In 2015, Volkswagen was found to have put intelligent software devices in its engines that improved results when the cars were being tested for emission levels. 11 million cars sold worldwide had these defect devices. Because of this, engines from these cars sold in America released pollutant 40 times above the maximum standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency. To me, the question of VW’s morality is easy: they were unethical. The situation was nowhere near the grey area from an ethical standpoint. VW made the decision to purposely cheat to improve emission results. Not only did VW lie for the sake of car sales, but it also negatively affected the environment around the world. According to Cars Technica, VW will pay $4.3 billion, plead guilty to three criminal charges, and indite six VW executives. Although VW can’t take back the damage it has done for the environment, I think that VW is paying for its actions as best as it can.
If corporations are afforded the same rights as individuals, they should have the same ethical and moral obligations and responsibilities. However, poor decisions made by a select few executives will affect the “little guy” working by the hour in a factory. The majority of people at the corporation were unaware of the situation concerning fuel emissions, but those who did know what was happening should be punished and pay for it. The business world is tricky, but deliberate cheating scandals determined by top executives who should be role models for their employees and other companies should not be tolerated. This is what gets tricky with regard to corporate personhood. Because of the decisions of executives, the company has to pay billions of dollars, which will cause layoffs and affect people who had nothing to do with the decision. Therefore, I think that corporations should be expected to have the same ethical responsibilities as individuals because a corporation’s decisions, good or bad, affect everyone in the company.