文摘
This essay is about the United StatesSupreme Court's discursive creation of twokinds of persons, one corporate the othercriminal, during its 1886 term. The aim is tocontrast the Supreme Court's construction ofcorporate personhood in County of SantaClara v. Southern Pacific Railroad withits view of the criminal's body in Exparte Royall, a habeas corpus case. TheCourt's purpose in deciding these two cases wasto design a way to disperse newly emergent andconflicting interests in particular directionswithin the judicial apparatus. The result isthat both criminal and corporate bodies come tobe understood through discourse, not outside ofit. So the body which is being introduced canbe described as a discursive body, not as ananatomical given.