Corporations,Rights, and Lobbying

While there may be several practical concerns regarding the practice of corporate lobbying of government officials, there is the more basic question of a corporation’s moral right to do so. I argue that group agents such as corporations have no moral rights, and thereby cannot have the right to lobby. There may be a basis for some legal rights for corporations, but I argue that lobbying cannot be one of the legal rights, even by reference to the rights of the individuals that make up the corporation. I end the paper by a discussion of how this argument applies to all private organizations, including public interest organizations.