To the Editor:

The issues raised in this article have previously been thoroughly identified and analyzed in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. The insights posted therein are applicable equally to nonprofit and for-profit corporations and may provide useful guidance to the recently appointed committee.

Especially after the disastrous decision in Citizens United, corporate boards should be encouraged to limit or ban corporate “political” commentary. I note that any comment about social issues is, perforce, also political. Regardless of the fantastical, meandering minds of a majority of the Supreme Court and some private citizens, corporations are not people with opinions. Indeed, from the outset in 15th-century England, law courts have made it expressly clear that corporation-as-person is simply a legal fiction. I note that defendants “John Doe” and “Jane Doe” are both legal fictions, but that does not mean that they’re real people.

To paraphrase a line from “The Merchant of Venice,” “If you prick a corporation, it does not bleed. If you tickle a corporation, it does not laugh.” Thus, unlike Shylock’s plea to be treated like any other human, corporations simply do not fit the bill. They don’t have opinions about things in general any more than they have a sense of humor. 

Institutional neutrality does not adversely impact or silence free speech by real people. People have a right to voice their opinions … they just don’t have a right to use a corporate megaphone to do so.

James Luce

Sept. 10

Luce is an alumnus of Yale College, having graduated in 1966.