We the Corporations chronicles the revelatory story of one of the most successful, yet least known, “civil rights movements” in American history.
We the Corporations chronicles the astonishing story of one of the most successful yet least well-known “civil rights movements” in American history. Hardly oppressed like women and minorities, business corporations, too, have fought since the nation’s earliest days to gain equal rights under the Constitution―and today have nearly all the same rights as ordinary people.
Exposing the historical origins of Citizens United and Hobby Lobby, Adam Winkler explains how those controversial Supreme Court decisions extending free speech and religious liberty to corporations were the capstone of a centuries-long struggle over corporate personhood and constitutional protections for business. Beginning his account in the colonial era, Winkler reveals the profound influence corporations had on the birth of democracy and on the shape of the Constitution itself. Once the Constitution was ratified, corporations quickly sought to gain the rights it guaranteed. The first Supreme Court case on the rights of corporations was decided in 1809, a half-century before the first comparable cases on the rights of African Americans or women. Ever since, corporations have waged a persistent and remarkably fruitful campaign to win an ever-greater share of individual rights.
Although corporations never marched on Washington, they employed many of the same strategies of more familiar civil rights struggles: civil disobedience, test cases, and novel legal claims made in a purposeful effort to reshape the law. Indeed, corporations have often been unheralded innovators in constitutional law, and several of the individual rights Americans hold most dear were first secured in lawsuits brought by businesses.
Winkler enlivens his narrative with a flair for storytelling and a colorful cast of characters: among others, Daniel Webster, America’s greatest advocate, who argued some of the earliest corporate rights cases on behalf of his business clients; Roger Taney, the reviled Chief Justice, who surprisingly fought to limit protections for corporations―in part to protect slavery; and Roscoe Conkling, a renowned politician who deceived the Supreme Court in a brazen effort to win for corporations the rights added to the Constitution for the freed slaves. Alexander Hamilton, Teddy Roosevelt, Huey Long, Ralph Nader, Louis Brandeis, and even Thurgood Marshall all played starring roles in the story of the corporate rights movement.
In this heated political age, nothing can be timelier than Winkler’s tour de force, which shows how America’s most powerful corporations won our most fundamental rights and turned the Constitution into a weapon to impede the regulation of big business.

This monumental work on the corporation is one of those enduring classics that many cite but few have read. Graced with a new introduction by Weidenbaum and Jensen, this new edition makes this classic available to a new generation. Written in the early 1930s, The Modern Corporation and Private Property remains the fundamental introduction to the internal organization of the corporation in modern society. Combining the analytical skills of an attorney with those of an economist, Berle and Means raise the central questions, even when their answers have been superseded by changing circumstances.<br /><br />The book's most enduring theme is the separation of ownership from control of the modern corporation and its consequences. Berle and Means display keen awareness of the divergent interests of directors and managers, and of each from owners of the firm. Among their predictions are the characteristic increase in size of the modem corporation and concentration of the economy. The authors view stock exchanges and stock markets as essential by-products of the rise of the modem corporation, and explore how these function. They address the difficult questions of whether corporations operate for the benefit of owners or managers, and explore what motivates managers to make effective use of corporate assets. Finally, they examine the role of the corporation as the prevailing form of organizing the production and distribution of goods and services.<br /><br />In their new introduction, Weidenbaum and Jensen, co-directors of the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University, critically assess the impact of developments not fully anticipated by Berle and Means, such as the rise of the service sector, and the significant role played by institutional investors in the owner/manager equation. They note the authors' prescient observations, including the complex role of and motivating influences on professional managers, and the significance of inside information on stock markets. As they note, The Modern Corporation and Private Property remains of central value to all those concerned with the evolution of this major social institution of the twentieth century. Scholar and practitioner alike will find it of enduring significance.

Did Supreme Court sell out America's citizens in the nineteenth century, with consequences lasting to this day? Is there a way for American citizens to recover democracy of, by, and for the people? Thom Hartmann takes on these most difficult questions and tells a startling story that will forever change your understanding of American history. Amongst a deep historical context, Hartmann describes the history of the Fourteenth Amendment created at the end of the Civil War to grant basic rights to freed slaves and how it has been used by lawyers representing corporate interests to extend additional rights to businesses far more frequently than to freed slaves. Prior to 1886, corporations were referred to in U.S. law as 'artificial persons.' But in 1886, after a series of cases brought by lawyers representing the expanding railroad interests, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were 'persons' and entitled to the same rights granted to people under the Bill of Rights. Since this ruling, America has lost the legal structures that allowed for people to control corporate behavior. In this revised and expanded second edition, Hartmann incorporates specific examples from today's headlines and proposes specific legal remedies that could truly save the world from political, economic and ecological disaster.

One of the most important recent developments in financial markets is the institutionalization of saving associated with the growth of pension funds, life insurance companies, and mutual funds. An increasing proportion of household saving is now managed by professional portfolio managers instead of being directly invested in the securities markets or held in the form of bank deposits. With the aging of the population and its adverse impact on public pension systems, the shift of individual savings to institutional investors is likely to become even more marked in the coming years.This book provides a comprehensive economic assessment of institutional investment. It charts the development and performance of the asset management industry and analyzes the implications of rising institutionalized saving for the development of the securities trading industry, the financial sector as a whole, and the wider economy. The book draws extensively on international experience, particularly in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.