who was the former president of a railway company The chief justice had signaled before hearing the oral arguments that "the court does not wish to hear argument on the question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does" (This backhanded precedent for the doctrine of corporate personhood was relied upon by conservative Supreme Courts in the late century for extensions of “individual rights” corporations--and in the Citizen United decision in 2010)