Signum: 118 U

Nevertheless, corporate bodies frequently make strategic business decisions that cost lives but render profit. The infamous "Ivey Report" at General Motors stands as one of the most dramatic recent examples of intentional manslaughter-for-profit. In that 1973 report, a GM engineer calculated that human casualties from fuel-fed fires cost the firm a mere $2.40 per vehicle, based on the cost of potential lawsuits. GM executives deemed this acceptable, as part of a cost-cutting initiative, then kept the report secret for 25 years, until they were caught lying about it in front of a federal judge.

Rarely do these acts result in criminal charges. Some might argue that antitrust actions seem similar to "capital punishment" for offending corporations, but the rules of antitrust are murky at best, and rarely invoked. Instead, most white-collar crime gets pursued through civil actions, i.e. punished through fines, not convictions. Moreover, consider how the FBI makes a point to track precise crime statistics throughout the US. Their annual reports create media headlines, but strangely enough, corporate crimes are specifically not reported.

Let’s take that point a step further. Based on a three strikes rule, some "inner city youth" (see below: 14^th Amendment) face serious prison time after subsequent convictions for possession of marijuana worth less than a good steak dinner for our friends driving the luxury SUVs. You can read about those stats in a CNN factoid. However, a corporate body can select a business strategy, knowing it will kill hundreds (in the case of GM with Ivey) or even thousands (in the case of Union Carbide in Bhopal) of innocent people, earn immense profits by employing that strategy, and yet never face a single criminal charge. You might find a few token examples reported in the press, particularly the most blatant ones, but you won’t find statistics about these crimes. Even the simple academic pursuit of studying corporate crime appears to be one way for a young professor to be denied tenure, or worse.

Once upon a time, corporations in the US were not granted personhood and better yet they had to exist under a constant threat of punishments – specifically death and taxes – if they did not obey the laws of the land. The United States Constitution of 1789 did not mention the word "corporation" within its text, and federal corporate law simply did not exist. Ostensibly, corporations were hated things in those days, having been the organizational structure for British colonies, and so they provided a "whipping boy" during the American Revolution. One senses an air of protest against corporations in post-revolutionary America – against them gaining political power in particular. State legislatures held rigid control over the life and death (and taxes) of corporate ventures, and they flexed that control under the direct guidance of the populace.

However, methinks the Lady Liberty doth protest too much.

Consider the story of an English physician named John Locke, whose political theories had profound influences on the American Revolution. Dr Locke argued that corporate bodies represent the political will of their members, and are therefore a fairer and more dynamic structure in the long run than political systems run by hereditary nobility. Some might argue that American colonists were perhaps less upset about their overlords’ corporate practices than they were about not sharing in profits. The leader of the new US government was even called a president, a term previously used not in government, per se, but rather to honor regional executives of the East India Company, the very first corporation "born" in London, England on the last day of the 16^th century.

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