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.
We ask only to be reassured About the noises in the cellar And the window that should not have been open
The failure of the Reformation to capture France had left for Frenchmen no half-way house between infallibility and infidelity; and while the intellect of Germany and England moved leisurely in the lines of religious evolution, the mind of France leaped from the hot faith which had massacred the Huguenots to the cold hostility with which La Mettrie, Helvetius, Holbach, and Diderot turned upon the religion of the fathers.
I must be cruel, only to be kind.
I belonged to the generation that grew up under National Socialism, and was blinded and led astray - and allowed itself to be led astray.
There is nothing in the world more stubborn than a corpse: you can hit it, you can knock it to pieces, but you cannot convince it.
Whatever hysteria exists is inflamed by mystery, suspicion and secrecy. Hard and exact facts will cool it.
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