A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the conceptual nature of corporations as legal entities created by law rather than physical beings.
John Marshall's quote underscores the abstract and legalistic nature of corporations, emphasizing that they do not exist physically but are recognized by law. This perspective reflects on the powerful role that legal frameworks play in shaping economic and social relationships, demonstrating how institutions can influence society even when they cannot be seen or touched.
In practice
During a seminar on corporate law, this quote can illustrate the concept of corporate personhood.
The particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the Constitution is void; and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.
If the agency of the mother in forming the character of her children is, in truth, so considerable, as I think it - if she does so much toward making her son what she would wish him to be - how essential is it that she should be fitted for the beneficial performance of these important duties.
The constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it.
The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. This is the very essence of judicial duty.
The federal government is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers. The principle, that it can exercise only the powers granted to it . . . is now universally admitted.
The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right.
Death is staring too long into the burning sun and the relief of entering a cool, dark room.
None of our prayers should ever be petitions for our own needs: for this is only another subtle way of trying to put ourselves on the same plane as God β acting as if we had no needs, as if we were not creatures, not dependent on Him.
It was the upward-reaching and fathomlessly hungering, heart-breaking love for the beauty of the world at its most beautiful, and, beyond that, for that beauty east of the sun and west of the moon which is past the reach of all but our most desperate desiring and is finally the beauty of Beauty itself, of Being itself and what lies at the heart of Being.
The trouble with righting some wrongs is that it makes the remaining ones seem even more unbearable.
Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old fillms, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to death.
She was incomprehensible, for, in her, soul and spirit were one - the beauty of her body was the essence of her soul. She was that unity sought for by philosophers through many centuries. In this outdoor waiting room of winds and stars she had been sitting for a hundred years, at peace in the contemplation of herself.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.