âCorporate Personhoodâ is being widely discussed after a couple of decades of slowly growing awareness of the creeping expansion of corporate legal rights since the late 19th century. After the Civil War in the 1860s corporations took on new forms, new legal rights, and new power. David Cobb, Phillip Pierce, Jed Holtzman, and Chris Carlsson will talk about the origins and and describe the evolution over time.