Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 05.djvu/511

* CORPORATION. 439 CORPSE. hold is usually fixed liy its charter, or a general law, and is commonly restricted in this country to so nuich as is uecessar' for the proper con- ducting of its business. A corporation has never heen held liable for a crime, except in cases where injury has resulted from its neglect of a duty required of it by law, or for nuisance, I'nblic Control of Corporations. — The right of i-isiting a corporation, conferred by charter or legislative appointment, is that of exercising legal superintendence and control over its actions. It is an absolute, summary power which is not reviewable by the courts, unless its arbitrary exercise would result in gross injustice. It is strictly applicable only to ecclesiastical and elee- mosynary corporations: the visitor of the former being the bishop of the diocese, and of the latter, the founder and his heirs, or persons appointed by the founder. In the United States the visi- tors of cliaritable corporations are usually their trustees, the right of visitation being determined wholly by statute. Civil corporations are subject to the general law, and are amenable to the process of the courts; and for misuse of powers or flagrant wrongs may be dissolved by proceed- ings instituted in l)ehalf of the State. A corporation may be dissolved bj' legislative act; by judicial decree; by surrender of its fran- chise and acceptance of the same by the State ; or by the death of so many members that enough are not left to elect new members pursuant to its charter. The power to dissolve by legis- lative act is unlimited in England, but in the United States it is restricted as pointed out above, A judicial decree dissolves for the viola- tion of the conditions of the charter or the law under which it exists. Upon dissolution, the pro]ierty of the corporation becomes a trust fund for the benefit of the State or the stockholders, usually the latter. If the institution were chari- table, this fund is administered by new trustees appointed by the court. Strictly, a corporation can have no legal exist- ence outside the jurisdiction of the sovei'eignty under which it was created. By a legal fiction, however, a corporation is held to exist legally whenever it is doing business, and it may sue and be sued, acquire property, etc., outside of the State of its creation. Citizenship of a Corporation. — Under the Constitution of the United States, a corporation is deemed not to be a citizen of a State, so that it cannot as a foreign corporation claim equal protection of the law with the citizen of a State other than the State of its creation. It follows that a State may impose any terms as a con- dition of a foreign corporation doing business within the State, provided it does not interfere with the corporation's constitutional right to carry on interstate commerce. A corporation, how- ever, is a citizen within the meaning of the clause of the Constitution conferring jurisdiction on the Federal courts, and it may sue or be sued in the Federal courts, and may in a proper case remove a cause from a State to a Federal court. Con- sult: Angell and Ames, Treatise on the Laiv of Private Corporations (Boston, 1882) ; Coqk, Treatise on the Laic of Corporations Having a Capital Stock (Chicago, 1808) ; Thompson, Com- mentaries on the Law of Corporations (San Francisco, 189.5-99) : Clark and Marshall, Treatise on the Lan-' of Private Corporations (St. Paul, 1901). See Charter; Certificate; DARTMOtTII CoLLECiE Ca.sE ; CONTRACT; CITIZEN, etc. For a discussion of municipal corporations, see the article on MuNicirAL Corporation.s and its bibliography; and for the .treatment of the subject of corporations in its relation to civil and Roman law, see article on Civil Law, Con- sult also such general treatises as those of Kent and Blackstone, CORPS, kor (Fr. corps). A military terra denoting a body of oflSeers, or ollicers and men, generally a distinct military organization, as the signal corps, corps of engineers, and the various Ijattalions of volunteers throughout England, locally know.n as the volunteer corps. Jlore spe- cifically it applies to the corps d'armee, or army corps, which, in the United States, consists nor- mally of about 25,000 men, divided into three divisions, each of three brigades of three regi- ments of infantry, with cavalry and artillery in proportion, commanded by a major-general. European armies generally are similarly organ- ized, with army cor])s of varying strength and composition. "(See Army Organization.) In the na'j', it is used in both senses, as the medical corps, the pat/ corps, the marine corps, etc. CORPS DIPLOMATIQUE, kor de'plo'ma'- tek' ( Fr., diplomatic body). The entire body of foreign amijassadors and diplomatists assembled at the Court, or the capital, of a country. CORPSE (OF., Fr. corps, body, from Lat. cor- pus, body). A dead human body is not prop- erty in the ordinaiy commercial sense of the term. In the absence of a statute authorizing it, a contract for the sale of such a body is void, as tending to outrage decency, humanity, and sound public poliej'; and an officer who seizes or holds the body under any legal process issued against the person while living is guilty of a criminal oft'ense. But while a dead body is not property, it is the object of certain well-defined rights. The possessor of these rights is the sur- viving husband or wife, or the nearest of kin of the deceased, unless the deceased has made a valid disposition of his body by will. Accord- ingly, if one mutilates a dead body, or prevents its Ijurial, or unlaw-fuUy interferes with it after burial, he may not only be punishable criminally, but be liable in an action for damages to the husband, or wife, or next of kin, of the deceased. Controversies between persons as to the place of burial of a dead body, or as to its proper treatment, are within the jurisdiction of a court of equity in the United States, and are not sub- ject to ecclesiastical decision — as has from an early period been the case in England. This is upon the theory that the rights in a dead body are in the nature of a sacred trust, in the proper performance of which all are interested who were allied to the deceased by family ties. Not only is a dead human body the object of legal rights, but it is also the object of legal duties on the part of the living. The husband, or the wife, or the nearest of kin, or in the absence or poverty of these a stranger under whose roof a death occurs, is bound to give the body of the deceased a decent burial. Any one who casts it away without funeral rites, or in- decently ex])oses it, is liable to criminal punish- ment. On the other hand, the expenses of a proper burial have' priority over every other claim against the estate of the deceased. Con-