Corporate Personhood is the idea that corporations are similar to people. They are at least similar in the sense that they have certain legal rights that people also have themselves. Corporations do have some similar rights, such as being able to sue and be sued, but do not have all of the same rights as people, such as the right to get married. It is true that corporations should have rights, but this can have certain ramifications. One way in which this could have legal and ethical ramifications is in election funding. For a long time, corporations have not been allowed to directly fund political candidates. In my opinion, this is good because this prevents corporations from directly funding and choosing a candidate simply because it would be beneficial for them for making more money. I do not feel that companies should be able to sway an election to favor themselves over the general public. But in 2010, corporations were granted the right to spend money as they please in regards to political elections which has resulted in a mound of controversy. For reasons like these, I feel that corporations having certain human rights can have negative effects and ramifications.

I feel that what Volkswagen did is definitely unethical and immoral. In one way or another, whether it was through a contractor or if one of their own employees did it, they deliberately put code into their system that would effect the emission readings so that they would score better when the emissions were being tested for regulation purposes. They most likely knew that their vehicles were not as clean as they claimed they were and put in measures to make it so that people wouldn’t find out in order to make more money. As a result of these actions, VW has been forced to pay large sums of money. According to the articles, they were estimated to pay nearly 25 billion dollars after a plea agreement and and the agreed compensation to the people affected by the scandal. In my opinion, these consequences are a fairly decent response to what they did. They had to pay a bunch of money, the CEO was removed, and their company image was definitely damaged in the process. While it seems that the legal repercussions may not have been that great (although they had to pay money because of those), the money and the damage to their company image will definitely have a huge impact on them as a company which I feel is a decent punishment.

And finally, in response to the given quote, if companies are given similar rights as an individual, then they should be required to have the same expectations as the individual at least in regards to the rights that they have similar to the individual. I feel that this is the case because companies should not be allowed to get away with things just because they are a corporation. I feel that this could lead to some corruption that the general public would not be pleased with. In the context of the case study that I chose, I take my viewpoint because if an individual were to do something to purposely cheat regulations, then that individual would be reprimanded for doing so and possibly banned from working/operating the area that they cheated regulations. I feel that companies should also be treated in a similar fashion because if we let companies of the hook, why can’t we also do the same for individuals.