| Santa Clara County V. Southern Pacific Railroad |
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The decision concerned three separate cases: #'' Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company'' #'' California v. Central Pacific Railroad Company'' #''California v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company'' At the lower court levels the question of whether corporations were persons had been argued, and these arguments were submitted in writing to the Court. However, before to the Constitution , which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." The court decision, written by Justice Harlan in favor of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, consists of a lengthy discussion of various technical factors and does not rely upon or include the determination that corporations can be classified as "persons" according to the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. However, the court reporter, J. C. Bancroft Davis , inserted Chief Justice Waite's comments as "Statement of Facts", even though Chief Justice Waite stressed to Davis that the court did not rely on this information to reach its decision. Many cases since have referred to this decision as setting a Legal Precedent for recognition of Corporate Personhood , even though the Supreme Court decided in the 1905 case of United States V. Detroit Lumber that headnotes and statement of fact can not be construed as being part of official court decisions. Some Historians have speculated that the reason Chief Justice Waite may have declined to hear arguments regarding the personhood status of corporations is because he may have been convinced that this was the original intent of Congress when drafting the amendment through testimony by Roscoe Conkling during the San Mateo County V. Southern Pacific Railroad case of 1882. Roscoe Conkling was one of the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment and he claimed that members of congress were careful to use the word "person" rather than "citizen" when writing the Fourteenth Amendment so that corporations could be included in the definition. As evidence, he read from a secret journal that was written during the drafting process. However, in 1932, a Stanford law librarian, Howard Graham discovered that the entries read during Conkling's testimony differed from the entries in the secret journal. He concluded that Roscoe Conkling, who was working for the railroad industry at the time of his testimony before the Supreme Court, purposely misled the court with his testimony in order to grant corporations the same constitutional rights as natural persons. Eight detailed publications by Graham about the topic were compiled and republished as Everyman's Constitution in 1968. SEE ALSO REFERENCES
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