Let’s play make-believe (sorry, lawyers call it “counterfactual”) with Justice Stephen J. Breyer. Imagine that Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, had incorporated his buccaneering business as Pirates, Inc. Now Blackbeard is captured.

And sued. “Do you think in the 18th century if they'd brought Pirates, Incorporated [to court], and we get all their gold, and Blackbeard gets up and he says, oh, it isn't me; it's the corporation—do you think that they would have then said: Oh, I see, it's a corporation. Good-bye. Go home[?]”