A guy out in California wants to make a point about corporate personhood, so he put a certificate of incorporation (the closest thing to a physical presence a corporation has) in the passenger seat of his car, and drove in the carpool lane until the cops pulled him over. He says:
“If it gets there to the Supreme Court, it would be great. Large-scale corporations, they don’t go to jail for the crimes that they have committed,” the 56-year-old Marin County man said. “Personhood is one of the many absurdities we’ve given these corporations that we let run wild. It’s that kind of mind-fuck we’re asking to actually address.”
Supreme Court precedent likening a corporation to a person dates back more than a century. So for years, Frieman has been driving without a breathing passenger in the carpool lane, in hopes of being pulled over and cited. Moreover, he notes, the state Vehicle Code defines a person as “natural persons and corporations.”
Wait, for years? What is the highway patrol doing, anyway?
Also, this is doomed to fail for the same reason that driving with your wife’s birth certificate in the passenger seat isn’t the same thing as actually driving with your wife in the passenger seat. One is carpooling, the other is driving with a piece of paper.