We the Corporations – How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights

The evolution of corporate rights in America is overviewed with a focus on case history in We the Corporations. It is both fascinating and alarming. The book culminates with the case which has outraged most of the population, namely, Citizens United. But it gives a very full history of key court cases that framed constitutional rights of corporations and the litigants and justices who paved the way for the world we currently live in. If one wants to understand how corporate capitalism has come to pervade so much of politics in America, one must read this book. It illuminates the issue and gives the landmark cases that have enabled the current system.The author is a UCLA law professor and the book is very much a legal history which focuses on the cases which enabled corporate rights in America. The author starts with the founding of the nation and some inherited perspectives on corporate rights inherited from English Law. Early cases, before the complete proliferation of limited liability companies were for example, the Dartmouth College vs Woodward. The author discusses ideas like the rights of chartered companies to be exempt from state meddling and the first company which really had to face such an issue was the Bank of the United States. Early corporate disputes centered more around states rights to regulate vs corporate rights to engage in business on their own terms. The author discusses how the turning point in the ideas of the breath of corporate rights came after the Civil War and the 14th amendment. As absurd as it is, the granting of equal rights in constitutional terms suddenly turned into a cry for equality for corporations despite not being persons of any tangible form. The author highlights the central arguments for corporate rights were constructed around the reality that corporations are funded by people who's rights should flow the corporations. On the rebutting side was always the argument that corporations are set up to limit liability to the individual, are social constructions, and are not entitled to equal treatment. The examples of this are discussed in multiple landmark cases where criminal liability became an issue and questions of obligations of directors. Throughout corporate history in the US after the civil war, these ideas continued to cycle back and forth depending on the temperature of the Supreme Court. It is quite interesting and things like funding of campaigns is a matter that has rich history the ignited concerns at the turn of the century. The issues we face today rhyme with the past.The author gives the full history of corporate rights and how the constitutional rights in a post civil war world were twisted into rights for corporations. Subsequent to that, the exact meaning of that interpretation became central to many cases of the next 150 years. This culminated with Citizens United and the free speech rights for corporations. Onlookers into American society would find much of this completely ridiculous but nonetheless the libertarian corporate capitalist streak of the country has solidified the rights of corporations after many battles over the last 2 centuries. It will take a long time and much effort to partially reverse such decisions and there is strong evidence recent cases are more judicial activism than what is normal. If one wants to understand some of the subtleties and history of corporate lobbying for its rights in America, one must read this book.

Pros:1.Like the School House Gate this book takes you on a journey on how a specific side...won its rights....and like The School House Gate....it makes the journey a fun one...rather then a dry one.2. The author does this thing where he will go into a case and then pause and say well in order to understand this you must first understand this. The other then will take you on this journey to understand what you need to understand and then teleport you back to the case...and it's smooth as heck lol. Like for example early in the book the author goes into the Bank of United States vs. Daex case or w.e, then goes back in time to BLack Stone to explain his view on corporations. The author then teleports you back to the Bank case to a lawyer who would use the published theory Black Stone came up with to defend the case.2. The elegance of the writer is just something to behold and is just on another level. This book gives you information just as incredible as the Color of Law....or An American Sickness gives....but with a creative/skillful writing style that those books lack.3.The author details how this battle between 2 perspectives on corporations "as persons but artificial persons, and "piercing the veal" which is when you focus on the people within the corporation rather then the corporation itself" (with an emphasis on the latter perspective) led to corporations being what they are today.4. The author explains the background/history of judges/lawyers in court cases so we get why a certain decision was made. He also reveals how even back in the day politics was divisive as heck despite what we might think.Cons:1. Only con is that the last quarter of the book was rather dry.

There is a wealth of really interesting material in here about the history of legal rights for corporations and also about the people who were prominent in the fray. With the help of a good editor I could easily see it as a 5-star read. As it was it almost slipped to 3.At first I was quite enjoying the book, but it rapidly descended into something I guess I might EXPECT a law professor to write. Turgid and too much verbosity. I found myself 25% of the way through, and we were still in 1809. The very early history is relevant and is stuff I did not know about at all, but we REALLY did NOT have to have so much detail. AND repetition. He often says the same thing at least two or three times, sometimes in exactly the same words. To make it worse, although the organization of the book overall is rational, many of the chapters are poorly organized. For example, the chapter centering on Lewis Powell, Jr., opens at his going-away party from Philip Morris, the it digresses, then it comes back to the party, then it digresses again....Ultimately I am glad I read the book, but if it had not been a selection for my book group I suspect I might have stopped reading it at some point.

Winkler does a superb job of showing how logic, even brilliant logic, can be used to corrupt and warp our Constitution. The odd lie by, say Roscoe Conkling, helps. And having a Supreme Court justice like Powell ringing a secret, subterranean alarm bell on how corporations were under a nebulous assault by nefarious humans certainly pushed the corporate agenda. But the original decision that pried the requirement that corporations provide a public good led us down the path of corporations being allowed to pour as much money into elections. Winkler doesn’t take sides but does illuminate the path showing how even liberals have contributed to the seemingly unfathomable decision that corporations are people in almost every Constitutional right.

This book was hard to put down as it talks about how rich corporations used their influences on the Supreme Court to be considered persons under the 14th Amendment in order to get protection under the constitution. The 14th Amendment (along with the 13th and 15th) was written to integrate freed slaves legally into society, was usurped by the corporations to not be considered organizations but a gathering of people. The last remaining drafter of the 14th Amendment lied to convince the Supremes that Corporations were part of the definition of "persons as stated in the Amendment. A study done shows in a 30 year period some 300 14 Amendment cases were brought before the Supreme Court. Of those only 25 were race related in which was voted down every time (included I assume the infamous "Pleussy"). The rest were Corporate right's related which the corporations won every time.Funny how Conservatives and their like-minded Justices claim to narrowly define the Constitution to what is written rather than the intent (after all neither negro's nor slaves are mentioned in the 14 Amendment) Conservative interpretations have been used against their intended subjects (Like Pleussy), but when cases like Loving (Interacial marriage), Brown, and Gay marriage are decided using the intent of the Amendment those same Conservatives who have been twisting the amendment for corporations accuse those rulings of a "radical court exceeding its authority"People who are wondering how "Citizens United" and "Hobby Lobby" were decided need to know this is the result of a 150-year legal battle to get Corporations rights they don't deserve. I've been waiting for someone to put this information together in one book and this is it.