legal fictions are the spackle which smoothes over a pathological adherence to precedent. they are not reality-based; they are an arbitrary attempt to preserve bad choices made in a time before which benefited a very few and would otherwise not be workable now. and they often do not work even so. law is simply an algorithm which codifies expected behaviors. it is the software of a society. there are bugs in the software. legal fictions are the workarounds. workarounds often give unexpected and unwanted results because they circumvent the problem, they do not eliminate it. corporate personhood along with the spending of money equaling speech are prime examples of this.
it's long past time we upgraded our social software.