We the corporations : how American businesses won their civil rights

Summary:

Traces the two-hundred-year history of corporate America's battle to achieve constitutional freedom from federal control, examining the civil rights debates and key events that shaped the controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision to extend constitutional protections to businesses. -- Provided by publisher.

In this groundbreaking portrait of corporate seizure of political power, We the Corporations reveals how American businesses won equal rights and transformed the Constitution to serve the ends of capital. Corporations-like minorities and women-have had a civil rights movement of their own, and now possess nearly all the same rights as ordinary people. Uncovering the deep historical roots of Citizens United, Adam Winkler shows how that controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision was the capstone of a two-hundred-year battle over corporate personhood and constitutional protections for business. Bringing to resounding life the legendary lawyers and justices involved in the corporate rights movement-among them Daniel Webster, Roger Taney, Lewis Powell, and even Thurgood Marshall-Winkler's tour de force exposes how the nation's most powerful corporations gained our most fundamental rights and turned the Constitution into a bulwark against the regulation of big business. -- Provided by publisher.

Record details

ISBN: 9780871407122
ISBN: 0871407124
Physical Description: xxiv, 471 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W.W. Norton & Company, [2018]

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 405-444) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Introduction: Are corporations people? -- Part 1. Corporate origins. In the beginning, America was a corporation -- Part 2. The birth of corporate rights. The first corporate rights case ; The corporation's lawyer -- Part 3. Property rights, not liberty rights. The conspiracy for corporate rights ; The corporate criminal ; Property, not politics -- Part 4. The rise of liberty rights for corporations. Discrete and insular corporations ; Corporations, race, and civil rights ; The corporation's justice ; The triumph of corporate rights -- Conclusion: Corporate rights and wrongs -- Chronology of corporate rights.