 In a U.S. historical context, the phrase "Corporate Personhood" refers to the ongoing legal debate over the extent to which rights traditionally associated with natural persons should also be afforded to corporations.A headnote issued by the Court Reporter in the 1886 Supreme Court case "Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co." claimed to state the sense of the Court regarding the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as it applies to corporations, without the Court having actually made a decision or issued a written opinion on that point.This was the first time that the Supreme Court was reported to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause granted constitutional protections to corporations as well as to natural persons, although numerous other cases, since "Dartmouth College v. Woodward" in 1819, had recognized that corporations were entitled to some of the protections of the Constitution.