It's clear, it's concise, and I think it's now necessary:
"(a) Except as provided in section (b) of this amendment, the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and all amendments thereto apply only to natural persons, and not to corporations or other artificial persons. Nothing in this amendment shall preclude rights as persons being granted by statutes of either the United State of America or the several States, but any rights granted by any such statutes may also be modified or eliminated by subsequent statutes.
(b) Corporations shall be entitled to reasonable compensation if their property is seized by the United States or by any State."
From the first time I learned in law school that corporations had been granted ANY rights under the Constitution, this struck me as one of the most wrong-headed decisions in the history of the United States Supreme Court. And although I spent most of the private practice portion of my legal career representing corporations, I still regard the decision to extend most constitutional rights to corporations as both bizarre and completely wrong.
The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, less than 16 years after the Continental Congress adopted a document, the second paragraph of which began with these ringing words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Rather clearly, the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were intended to implement these "unalienable rights." And equally clearly, those "unalienable rights" belong only to natural persons, because it is only natural persons who band together to create governments. Corporations and other artifical persons don't create governments, they are created BY governments. They exist only by virtue of the government action that created them.
Rather clearly, some of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights CAN'T logically be extended to corporations. For example, corporations don't engage in worship or have religious beliefs, so it makes no logical sense to extend freedom of religion to corporations. Similarly, unless we want to say that corporations have a right to assemble huge private armies largely free of any restriction by the government, they can't have a right to bear arms.
You might ask why I include section (b), and if that isn't inconsistent with my overall attitude toward corporate personhood. I don't think so, and here's why: If a government confiscates corporate property without compensation, it directly destroys the value of the shares held by the natural persons who own the corporation (whether their ownership is direct or indirect). Permitting such uncompensated confiscation would permit the governent to achieve indirectly what it could not constitutionally do directly (seizing the shares themselves from their owners without compensation).
On the other hand, restricting corporate speech, or corporate rights to plead the 5th amendment don't in any way restrict the stockholders' rights of free speech or under the 5th amendment.