(2003) The Corporation shows the development of the contemporary business corporation, from a legal entity that originated as a government-chartered institution meant to affect specific public functions, to the rise of the modern commercial institution entitled to most of the legal rights of a person.
The documentary concentrates mostly upon corporations in North America, especially in the United States.
One theme is its assessment of corporate personhood, as a result of an 1886 case in the Supreme Court of the United States in which a statement by Chief Justice Morrison Waite[nb 1] led to corporations as "persons" having the same rights as human beings, based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.