미국헌법상 법인(法人)의 기본권에 관한 소고(小考)

The U.S. Constitution doesn’t have any provision about corporation. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court of U.S. has ruled that corporations are eligible for protection of constitutional rights since long before. There are A lot of decisions and discussions on the issue of corporate constitutional rights in the American legal literature. In addition, the very controversial case, Citizens United v. FEC (2010), provoke the heated debate over the legitimacy of the corporate constitutional rights. When looking into the history about American corporate constitutional rights, we could find that political speech rights of corporation were accepted by the Supreme Court in recently with strong dissents while economic rights from the beginning of U.S. comparatively with ease. The Supreme Court has used the theory of legal nature of corporation to ground the corporate constituional rights. But the inconsistency of the Court’s rulings caused criticism from legal scholars. Some scholars suggests that the corporate rights should be deemed as means not as ends. It is said that to protect corporate constitutional rights is to guarantee individuals’ rights in the end. In a certain context, giving the constitutional rights to corporation could lead to deny or infringe some individuals’ constitutional rights. Whenever considering whether to concede the corporate constitutional rights or not, it should be kept in mind that conceding corporation constitutional rights could restrict another individuals’ rights.