Corporate Personhood

"The personhood of corporations has always been a vexing puzzle for legal scholars, but in the last few years the dilemma over corporate personhood has moved well beyond academic circles and has become a controversial topic among wide swaths of the American public. Perhaps the surge of interest in the subject can be attributed to recent Supreme Court decisions that have extended corporate political speech and religious exercise rights in unprecedented directions. For example, in 2010, the Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission upheld the First Amendment right of corporations to use unlimited corporate funds to support or oppose candidates in political elections. In 2014, the Court in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. held that it is a violation of a corporation's right to religious freedom to require the company to provide employees with access to contraceptive methods that the corporation finds morally objectionable based on its religious principles"--