It is to be noticed as of great significance that the Fourteenth Amendment declares that no state shall deprive "any person" of life, liberty, or property, etc., and the same form of expression is used with reference to the equal protection of the laws. No doubt privileges and immunities are and may be recognized or conferred as incident to citizenship which are not recognized or conferred as to aliens, but it is now well settled that the fundamental guaranties of civil rights relate to persons who are subject to the law of the state, regardless of their condition. As has already been said the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted on account of a fear that the negroes recently emancipated from slavery, and who prior to the adoption of that amendment had not been uniformly regarded as citizens, would be deprived in some of the states of their civil rights. But the language of the amendment goes further than to make the negroes citizens and guarantee to them the privileges and immunities of citizenship. It is unlimited in its scope and has been so interpreted. (See above, § 21.) Thus Chinese subjects within the limits of a state, although they are not citizens of the state nor of the United States, and under the provisions of the present naturalization laws cannot become citizens, are, nevertheless, entitled to full protection of their civil rights ( Yick Wo v. Hopkins).

The question has arisen whether a corporation is a person within the language of the Fourteenth Amendment. A corporation is undoubtedly entitled to the protection of property rights which it has acquired under authority of law. To deny it such protection would be to deprive the members of the corporation of their property rights, and it is therefore properly said that a corporation, though only an artificial person, is a person within the language of the amendment (Pembina Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania). In this respect the distinction between "person" and "citizen" is recognized, for corporations are not and cannot be citizens either of a state or of the United States. In construing the clause of the judiciary article conferring jurisdiction on the federal courts in controversies between citizens of different states (see above, § 152) corporations are by fiction said to be citizens of their respective states; but this conclusion was reached by regarding the corporation as composed of individuals presumed to be citizens of the state in which the corporation is organized. A state may discriminate against corporations organized in another state, although it could not thus discriminate against persons who are citizens of another state. (See above, § 190.)