In the US the idea has been supported in a series of SCOTUS decisions, starting with
Dartmouth College in 1818.
Most legal scholars point to the 1886
Santa Clara County v, Southern Pacific RR decision as having established the legal precedent for “corporate personhood” (with the help of the Court Reporter; one Bancroft Davis, a former RR executive who ‘wrongly’ claimed that the Court had ruled that corporations had 14th Amendment protections. It had not; while the justices orally agreed beforehand that corporations had such protections, the issue was not included in the case and therefore not decided by the Court).
Later decisions expanded the idea of “corporate personhood rights”. In