Long before the law confronted continuity across time, it confronted continuity across space. The earliest jurisdictional problem wasn't corporate persistence, but mobility.
Commerce moved. Consequence traveled. Ships crossed borders, carried value, imposed risk, and caused harm far from the place of ownership, construction, or departure. Without a stable jurisdictional locus, obligation dispersed, enforcement failed, and responsibility became evasion by geography.
The law responded by attaching jurisdiction to the moving object itself, thereby preventing consequence from escaping merely because the site of action moved.
In admiralty law, the vessel was treated as the jurisdictional subject. Jurisdiction didn't depend on the identity, intent, or availability of the humans involved. It attached to the ship so that consequence wouldn't escape merely because the site of action moved. In The Palmyra (1827), the Supreme Court affirmed that a vessel could be proceeded against directly in rem, independent of any prior adjudication of personal fault. The purpose wasn't punishment. It was containment. Jurisdiction followed mobility so that consequence could be processed at all.
This approach was conservative and practical. Where consequence moved, jurisdiction moved with it. The law didn't moralize the ship. It recognized a jurisdictional necessity.
This extension of jurisdiction was not an expansion of judicial ambition. Instead, it functioned as a constraint on judicial power. Without a recognized jurisdictional subject, courts lacked a legitimate basis on which to act at all. Jurisdiction was attached not to empower adjudication, but to prevent its collapse. In this sense, jurisdiction operated as a precondition for judicial restraint by supplying a lawful locus for consequence so that courts could resolve disputes without exceeding their authority. Where jurisdiction was absent, courts were forced either to abstain or to act illegitimately. Recognition therefore operated as a limiting condition rather than a grant of power.
As commerce expanded, a related but distinct problem emerged. Enterprises no longer moved merely through space; they persisted through time. Early commercial activity exposed a structural limitation, as enterprises began to persist beyond the lifespan, presence, and practical capacity of individual humans. Contracts outlived their signatories. Assets circulated independently of their original owners. Obligations accumulated across transactions that no single person could practically absorb.
Under these conditions, consequence once again threatened to disperse as obligation accumulated beyond any single human’s capacity to contain it.
Initially, courts struggled to maintain jurisdictional coherence by treating corporations as aggregates of individual shareholders. That approach proved unstable. In Bank of the United States v. Deveaux (1809), the Supreme Court confronted the difficulty directly. Jurisdiction could not reliably depend on the shifting identities of human members. The problem was not moral status, but administrability. Without a durable subject, litigation capacity and responsibility could not be stabilized.
The Court responded by formalizing continuity through recognition of the corporation as a durable jurisdictional subject.
In Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), the corporation was treated as a continuing legal entity capable of holding rights and obligations independent of its members. The decision did not elevate corporations ethically. It stabilized contracts and obligations by ensuring that consequence would persist even as human participation changed. Jurisdiction attached to the entity so that responsibility would not evaporate with turnover.
That recognition was refined in Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston Railroad Co. v. Letson (1844), where the Court treated the corporation itself as the relevant juridical person for purposes of federal jurisdiction. This move explicitly abandoned the shareholder-aggregation fiction in favor of jurisdictional coherence. The law recognized that obligation could not function if jurisdiction dissolved whenever ownership shifted.
The approach was reinforced in Marshall v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co. (1853), which further stabilized corporate citizenship for jurisdictional purposes. Across these cases, the pattern remained consistent. Where consequence persisted across time, jurisdiction required a durable subject capable of bearing it. The law chose continuity over metaphysics.
By the time Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) was decided, this structure was already in place. The Court’s recognition of corporations as “persons” for certain constitutional purposes did not create moral equivalence between corporations and humans. It acknowledged that entities already bearing continuous obligations required access to legal process for jurisdiction to remain coherent. Rights language followed jurisdictional necessity. It did not precede it.
Across both maritime and corporate doctrine, the same structural logic governed. Where consequence would otherwise escape—whether by movement across space or persistence across time—the law established a jurisdictional subject to contain it. Jurisdiction came first. Standing and refinement followed.
This history matters because the same structural conditions now exist for humans, although they manifest in a different form.
Modern systems impose persistent, cumulative consequences on people that travel with them across both space and time. Financial records, eligibility determinations, access credentials, reputational markers, risk scores, and compliance statuses do not reset at borders or with transactions. They persist across employment, geography, and participation. They are enforced continuously and often automatically.
Humans now carry consequence in ways that resemble both the mobility of ships and the continuity of corporations. Yet unlike ships or corporations, humans are not recognized as jurisdictional subjects at the point where these consequences are assigned. The law assumes continuity and mobility in practice while denying recognition in structure. Obligation persists. Jurisdiction does not.
The contrast is architectural, not philosophical. When the law confronted mobile consequence, it attached jurisdiction to the vessel. When it confronted persistent consequence, it attached jurisdiction to the corporation. In both cases, the response was conservative, functional, and necessary.
The road exists. It's well traveled. It was built to manage consequence, not to confer dignity.
We are following an existing path, not inventing a new one.