winkler, adam

=bad format, bad code see txt bak=bk review sum?<a href="https://www.bu.edu/bulawreview/files/2018/11/BEERMANN-1.pdf">https://www.bu.edu/bulawreview/files/2018/11/BEERMANN-1.pdf</a>==<a href="https://www.newenglrev.com/volume-54-1/corporate-personhood-and-constitutional-rights-for-corporations">https://www.newenglrev.com/volume-54-1/corporate-personhood-and-constitutional-rights-for-corporations</a>NEW ENGLAND LAW REVIEW
CORPORATE PERSON-HOOD AND CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS FOR CORPORATIONS Are corporations people? Should they, like ordinary individuals, be able to claim constitutional protections? These questions, which form the heart of Professor Kent Greenfield’s book, Corporations are People Too (And They Should Act Like It),1 have become among the most important in modern constitutional law due to a trio of high-profile, landmark cases. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court held that business corporations have the same free speech rights as ordinary people to spend their money on election advertisements.2 In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the Court held that business corporations have religious liberty under a federal law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, entitling the chain of craft stores to an exemption from a federal law requiring birth control coverage in employee health plans.3 More recently, in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Court ruled that business corporations have religious liberty rights under the First Amendment, allowing a for-profit bakery to refuse to comply with a state law prohibiting public accommodations from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.4One prominent criticism of these controversial decisions is that the Supreme Court relied on corporate personhood—the legal doctrine that treats corporations as if they are legal persons with their own rights. In the wake of Citizens United, Occupy Wall Street protestors held up signs saying “Corporations Are NOT People” and adopted a resolution declaring that “one critical threat to authentic democratic self-governance comes from the fact that corporations have been defined as legal persons. . . . [H]uman beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.”5 A proposed amendment to the Constitution has been introduced that would limit the “rights protected by the Constitution of the United States” to “natural persons only.”6
In Corporations Are People Too, Greenfield offers a powerful rebuttal to these critics. Although Greenfield, too, believes that Citizens United is a problematic decision, he argues that the critics are wrong about corporate personhood. According to Greenfield, corporations should be considered legal persons for some purposes, including constitutional analysis. “Corporations do, and should, receive constitutional protections,” Greenfield contends, even if not all of the same ones that ordinary people enjoy. To sort out which rights corporations should have, Greenfield offers a nuanced test that looks at the type of corporation and the nature of the right. “In other words, when it comes to the Constitution, corporations are people some of the time. And sometimes they are not.”
Inspired by Greenfield’s book, this article provides a historical analysis of the role of corporate personhood in the rise of constitutional protections for corporations.7 By surveying the most important corporate rights cases decided by the Supreme Court over the course of American history, this article finds that corporate personhood has not played the central role in justifying the steady expansion of corporate constitutional rights that some critics of Citizens United might assume. Start, for example, with Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Citizens United; it never refers to corporations as people and nothing in the logic or reasoning of the opinion depends upon corporate personhood. Justice Kennedy employs instead a different metaphor for the corporation: corporations are associations. Describing the corporation as “an association that has taken on the corporate form,” Justice Kennedy’s opinion declares, “If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”8 In Justice Kennedy’s view, corporations have rights not because they are persons but because corporations are comprised of people, and those people have rights that ought to be respected regardless of the use of the corporate form.
Citizens United, we will see, follows the approach the Supreme Court has typically taken to corporate rights controversies. Corporations have been winning constitutional protections since America’s earliest days, and the prevailing pattern has been for the Supreme Court to treat corporations as associations or to ignore the relevance of the corporate entity entirely. In the majority of cases extending constitutional rights to corporations, the Court tends to portray corporations as simply groups of people who have come together for a common purpose.9 While the Supreme Court has occasionally referred to corporate personhood, the associational understanding of the corporation has been far more influential in justifying the extension of constitutional rights to corporations. Because the courts look through the corporate veil and base the constitutional analysis on the members of the corporation—or sometimes on the rights of other people—corporate entities are afforded nearly all the same rights as people. The personhood of the corporation, however, plays little role in these cases.
Surprisingly, in the handful of cases when the Supreme Court has embraced the principle of corporate personhood, the result has usually been to limit the rights of corporations. When the corporation is taken to be a person in its own right, separate and apart from its members, it is often accorded lesser and fewer rights than ordinary people; a corporate person is not equal to a human person. Rather than justify expansive rights for corporations, corporate personhood historically has had the opposite effect, invoked most frequently in judicial decisions that restrict the range of corporate rights claims. When courts recognize corporations as legal persons, they treat them as having rights of their own instead of affording them the same rights as their members have as individuals. And because corporations are special types of legal persons, they should only have those rights appropriate for corporate persons.
I. Corporations as Legal PersonsWhat is corporate personhood? For all the criticism of corporate personhood in the controversy over Citizens United, it is easy to overlook the fact that corporate personhood is an ancient and well-established principle in business law. More than 250 years ago, before the birth of the United States, William Blackstone in his influential Commentaries on the Law of England described the corporation as an “artificial person.”10 Open up any introductory law school textbook on corporate law or business associations and one of the very first lessons will be that corporations are legal persons. “One of the law’s most economically significant contributions to business life,” writes Robert Charles Clark in his popular Corporate Law textbook, “has been the creation of fictional but legally recognized entities or ‘persons’ that are treated as having some of the attributes of natural persons.” When Marshall referred to the corporation as “artificial” and “existing only in contemplation of law,” he was explaining why the case should not be decided on the basis of the separate legal personality of the corporations; the corporation was an ephemeral, fictional entity, not a person with rights of its own.53 Instead, the case should be decided on the basis of the members’ rights, because they were the ones who Marshall saw as the real parties involved.
C. Equal Protection of the Laws
TA controversial, even bizarre, expansion of corporate rights came out of a series of Supreme Court cases in the 1880s involving the Southern Pacific Railroad. After California adopted a special tax rule for property owned by railroads, the Southern Pacific in a series of cases challenged the law as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection and due process clauses.54 The Supreme Court would ultimately hold that corporations were entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protections,55 although corporate personhood would play an ambiguous and easily exaggerated role.
Without doubt, the Southern Pacific’s cases raised the question of whether a corporation was a “person” under the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from denying to any “person” due process and equal protection of the laws. While that amendment was adopted after the Civil War to protect the rights of the freedmen, Southern Pacific argued it also protected business corporations. Roscoe Conkling, Southern Pacific’s lead lawyer in the first of two Southern Pacific cases, San Mateo County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.,56 claimed that corporations were persons: “[T]he Southern Pacific Railroad Company and its creditors and stockholders are among the ‘persons’ protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”57
Conkling had unusual credibility with the Justices. He had been twice nominated to sit on the Supreme Court himself, most recently in the spring of 1882, the same year he appeared before the Court in the San Mateo County case.58 He was confirmed by the Senate but declined the seat; he remains the last person to refuse a Supreme Court appointment after being confirmed.59 Moreover, as a young congressional representative, Conkling had served on the committee that drafted the Fourteenth Amendment.60 Conkling suggested he and his fellow committee members drafted the amendment to protect corporations. The committee, he said, had changed the proposed text, which originally guaranteed equal protection to “citizens of the United States,” to guarantee rights to every “person.”61 In law, the word person “has by long and constant acceptance, and by multiplied judicial construction, been held to embrace artificial persons as well as natural persons.”62 “The American people, in giving [The Fourteenth Amendment] their imprimatur understood what they were doing, and meant to decree what has, in fact, been decreed.”63 Conkling supported his account by producing an old journal that purported to be an unpublished record of the deliberations of the Fourteenth Amendment’s drafting committee.64
Although the somewhat suspicious journal was in fact an unpublished record of the drafting committee’s deliberations, it did not provide the evidence Conkling suggested. Howard Jay Graham, a legal historian who thoroughly studied Conkling’s argument in the San Mateo County case, found that the committee had never revised the Equal Protection Clause from “citizens” to “person,” as Conkling claimed.65 And none of the other drafters had ever suggested that corporations were covered by the amendment, either during the hotly contested and much publicized ratification debates or after. Graham concluded that Conkling, a trusted lawyer of outstanding reputation, had engaged in “a deliberate, brazen forgery” to win new rights for corporations.66
The Court never issued a final ruling in the San Mateo County case, holding onto it for three years until Southern Pacific unexpectedly settled the case.67 One is tempted to speculate that the Justices discovered the misconduct, but it remains uncertain. Nonetheless, the Southern Pacific had another case against another California county raising the same Fourteenth Amendment question ready for Supreme Court review: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.68 With Conkling no longer involved, the railroad corporation’s lawyers continued to argue that corporations were covered by the Equal Protection Clause. The Court ruled in favor of the railroad but on state law, not constitutional, grounds. The majority opinion explained that “it is not necessary to consider any other questions,” including the “grave questions of constitutional law” relating to corporations and the Fourteenth Amendment.69
One justice, Stephen Field, was particularly unhappy with the Court’s avoidance of the corporate rights question. Riding circuit, Justice Field had authored the lower court opinions in both San Mateo County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. and Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co., ruling that corporations were covered by the Equal Protection Clause.70 In a companion case decided by the Supreme Court on the same day as Santa Clara County, Field wrote separately to criticize his colleague’s avoidance of the corporate rights question. “At the present day, nearly all great enterprises are conducted by corporations,” wrote Field. 71 “Hardly an industry can be named that is not in some way promoted by them, and a vast portion of the wealth of the country is in their hands.”72 He expressed “regret that it has not been deemed consistent with [the Court’s] duty to decide the important constitutional questions involved, and particularly the one which was so fully considered in the circuit court.”73
Although Field and the other justices all understood that the Santa Clara County Court did not decide whether corporations had Fourteenth Amendment rights, that fact eluded the Supreme Court’s Reporter of Decisions. In the summary of the Santa Clara County opinion published in the official volumes of the United States Reports, the first sentence describes the Court’s holding: “The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”74 And the Reporter added an unusual headnote just before the first lines of the Court’s opinions reporting that the Chief Justice had said at the beginning of oral argument that the “Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.”75 As a result, the Santa Clara County case has mistakenly been cited in numerous cases for holding precisely what Field and the other justices explicitly said it did not: that corporations are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.76
A few years after Santa Clara County, Field wrote the majority opinion upholding double liability on railroads for damage to livestock in Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway Company v. Beckwith. 77 Although it was unnecessary given the outcome of the case, Field went out of his way to address corporate rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. “It is contended by counsel as the basis of his argument, and we admit the soundness of his position, that corporations are persons within the meaning of the clause in question. It was so held in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad.”78 Although Field’s statement was obviously incorrect about the holding of Santa Clara County, the justices ultimately agreed that corporations were protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Indeed, in the more than 140 years since Santa Clara County, all but three or four of the Justices who have sat on the Supreme Court have agreed that corporations have rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet, to this day, there has never been an opinion of the Court explaining why corporations are covered by the Fourteenth Amendment. It is thus somewhat hard to say how corporate personhood influenced the extension of these rights. Much of the argument by the lawyers in the Southern Pacific Railroad cases emphasized personhood: whether a corporation was a “person” under the text of the amendment. Field specifically embraces this conclusion too in Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway Company, although without explanation in one passing sentence.
For Field, however, personhood was little more than a textual hook. In his lower court opinions in the Southern Pacific Railroad cases, Field rejected the core tenet of corporate personhood, independence of identity. The court, he wrote, should not look to “the name under which different persons are united, but to the individuals composing the union.”79 Taking Chief Justice Marshall’s approach from Bank of the United States v. Deveaux, Field insisted that the true parties were the “members” of the corporation who “do not, because of such association, lose their rights to protection.”80 Corporations had Fourteenth Amendment rights not because corporations were equivalent to people but because corporations were comprised of actual people who had rights that would be burdened by business regulation.
Legal historians who have studied the Southern Pacific Railroad cases have generally rejected the idea that Santa Clara County turns on corporate personhood, despite the textual reliance on “persons.” Morton Horwitz argues that the doctrinal development of corporate rights at this time was not “a dramatic example of judicial personification of the corporation.”81 Instead, Horwitz, Greg Mark, and others contend that the lawyers and justices of the era emphasized a “partnership” theory of the corporation that looked right through the corporate veil and based corporate rights on the rights of the members.82 So while corporate personhood certainly played some role, at least as a textual matter, in the Santa Clara County line of cases, the Court never explicitly embraced any overarching theory of the corporation to justify the extension of Fourteenth Amendment rights. And the explanation we have from Field rested on a theory that denied the fundamental separation between the corporate entity and its members.
D. The Freedom of Association

The Supreme Court first held that corporations have a freedom of association under the First and Fourteenth Amendments in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, decided in 1958.83 Although, as we will see in the next section, the Court had previously declined to extend such a right to corporate entities in the early 1900s, the Southern effort to disable the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) during the Civil Rights Era pushed the justices to reverse course. The NAACP was not a business, of course, but it was formed as a corporation.84 And it was the NAACP’s corporate status that Alabama targeted in an effort to push the organization out of the state.
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==pretty good 7 min<a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-conversation-with-we-the-corporations-author-adam-winkler">https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-conversation-with-we-the-corporations-author-adam-winkler</a>=<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/author/adam-winkler">https://www.thedailybeast.com/author/adam-winkler</a>no lnxIn his muckracking classic, Other People’s Money – And How Bankers Use It, progressive reformer Louis Brandeis famously wrote, “Sunlight is the best of disinfectants.” In the modern financial system, corporate executives often control funds that don’t belong to them. To Brandeis, transparency and disclosure were effective means of minimizing the risk of executives misusing those funds, either wasting them away negligently or enriching themselves nefariously. Inspired by Brandeis, Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission to oversee publicly traded companies and to create a more open, reliable, honest marketplace for investors.Brandeis’s heirs in the progressive movement – along with other opponents of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United – have sought to have the SEC direct some sunlight on corporate political spending. This week the Commission closed the shades. In announcing its 2014 “Priorities,” the SEC omitted any mention of corporate political transparency. The implication is that the SEC will not issue any new rules on this, despite announcing late last year that it was considering “a proposed rule to require that public companies provide disclosure to shareholders regarding the use of corporate resources for political activities.”The news was an unexpected setback for the Corporate Reform Coalition, a group of institutional investors, government reform advocates, and labor unions that has been pushing for the SEC to compel disclosure of corporate political spending. The Coalition helped secure over 600,000 comments submitted to the SEC as part of the rulemaking process – a record. "We're incredibly disappointed by this, and we need an explanation for why they removed the most widely supported regulation in their docket," said Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen's Congress Watch.The SEC, for its part, offered no reasons for dropping disclosure. When the Supreme Court opened up the floodgates to corporate money in Citizens United, the justices assumed that such spending would be known by shareholders. “With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the Court. Yet Kennedy was wrong. There were no disclosure rules in place for this sort of spending. Because the law had banned it, Congress hadn’t required corporations to disclose it. In the 2012 election, hundreds of millions of “dark money” dollars flowed into campaign ads. With Congress hopelessly deadlocked, the SEC was disclosure advocates’ last hope.The SEC may have been persuaded by the arguments of those, like the Chamber of Commerce’s Blair Latoff Holmes, who insisted the SEC had no business regulating political spending. “Campaign finance reform is not, has never been, and should never be a function of the SEC,” according to Holmes. Brad Smith, of the Center for Competitive Politics, a group opposed to campaign finance reform, said the SEC’s proper focus is “protecting investors and regulating capital markets” not “campaign finance law.”There is some precedent for the SEC’s regulation of the political activity of publicly held corporations. According to Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, one of the leading experts on corporate disclosure, the SEC has previously acted in this area. She cites the SEC’s 1994 rules adopted to stem “pay-to-play” in the municipal bond market, 2010 rules restricting political fundraising by public pension fund advisors, and investigations into bribery of foreign officials after Watergate that spurred enactment of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Despite that history, it may be that today’s SEC is reluctant to take on a hot-button issue that might infuriate Republicans on Capitol Hill, who control the commission’s purse strings.While Brandeis would have applauded the efforts of disclosure advocates, he may have been too sanguine about sunlight’s curative effects. No doubt disclosure of corporate political spending would provide useful information some shareholders, especially those hyper-attentive to politics. Media and corporate watchdog groups would be able to expose who is spending what in our elections. Yet in today’s publicly held corporations, shareholders have little real power to control management. It’s extremely rare that shareholders are able to force corporate officials’ hands through proxy voting or breach of fiduciary duty lawsuits. And while some shareholders can sell their shares, that remedy isn’t available to many. Public pension funds often operate under rules that prohibit selling in such circumstances, and individual pension fund investors are penalized for selling early. Disclosure wouldn’t really empower shareholders to stop executives from spending shareholder money on politics.Disclosure can also have perverse effects. In the 1990s, a similar group of corporate reformers pushed for increased disclosure of executive compensation. The idea was to shame corporate boards from paying executives excessive salaries. The opposite happened. Boards saw what everyone else was paying and, certain that their executives were better than average, paid them accordingly. Executive compensation skyrocketed. The same thing could happen with disclosure of corporate political spending. Although shareholders can’t really do much with the information, the same can’t be said for executives seeking to influence elected officials. They’ll see what others are giving and commit their own firms to give more. Instead of shaming executives, we might see a political spending arms race.Or maybe not. Due to the SEC’s refusal to require transparency, all we can do is guess about disclosure’s ultimate effect. In the meantime, corporate executives will continue to funnel other people’s money into the electoral process – without those other people ever knowing about it.<div>
</div>=wiki 11 22adam Winkler (born July 25, 1967) is the Connell Professor of law at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCLA_School_of_Law" title="UCLA School of Law" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">UCLA School of Law</a>. He is the author of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_the_Corporations:How_American_Businesses_Won_Their_Civil_Rights" class="mw-redirect" title="We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-:0-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[1]</a> and Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[2]</a>He has been ranked as one of twenty most cited legal scholars in judicial opinions, including landmark Supreme Court cases on the First and Second Amendments.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[3]</a><div id="toc" class="toc" role="navigation" aria-labelledby="mw-toc-heading" style="border: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); background-color: rgb(248, 249, 250); padding: 7px; display: table;"><input type="checkbox" role="button" id="toctogglecheckbox" class="toctogglecheckbox" style="margin: 0px; position: absolute; opacity: 0; z-index: -1; display: none;" /><div class="toctitle" lang="en" dir="ltr" style="text-align: center; direction: ltr;">
</div><ul style="list-style: none; margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#Early_life_and_education" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">1Early life and education</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#Professional_career" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2Professional career</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#Scholarship" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3Scholarship</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#Awards_and_honors" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">4Awards and honors</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#References" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">5References</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#External_links" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">6External links</a></li></ul></div><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Early life and education[</h2>Winkler, born and raised in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles" title="Los Angeles" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Los Angeles</a>, is the youngest son of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award" class="mw-redirect" title="Academy Award" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Academy Award</a>-winning film producer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Winkler" title="Irwin Winkler" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Irwin Winkler</a>. As a child, he had small acting parts in movies, including appearing as the son of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_De_Niro" title="Robert De Niro" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Robert De Niro</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liza_Minnelli" title="Liza Minnelli" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Liza Minnelli</a> in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Scorsese" title="Martin Scorsese" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Martin Scorsese</a>'s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York,New_York(1977_film)" title="New York, New York (1977 film)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">New York, New York</a> (1977). He holds a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_of_Science" title="Bachelor of Science" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Bachelor of Science</a> in Foreign Service from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_A.Walsh_School_of_Foreign_Service" class="mw-redirect" title="Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service</a>, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Doctor" title="Juris Doctor" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Juris Doctor</a> from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_University_School_of_Law" title="New York University School of Law" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">New York University School of Law</a>, and a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%27s_degree" title="Master's degree" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Master's degree</a> in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_science" title="Political science" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">political science</a> from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,Los_Angeles" title="University of California, Los Angeles" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">UCLA</a> where he studied under <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Orren" title="Karen Orren" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Karen Orren</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[4]</a><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Professional career[</h2>Winkler served as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_clerk" title="Law clerk" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">law clerk</a> to judge <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Thompson" class="mw-disambig" title="David Thompson" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">David Thompson</a> of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Ninth_Circuit" title="United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit</a> from 1995-96. As a young lawyer, Winkler practiced with prominent trial lawyer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Weitzman" title="Howard Weitzman" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Howard Weitzman</a> and represented <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson" title="Michael Jackson" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Michael Jackson</a> in his defense against charges of sexual assault.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-Bio-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[5]</a>He has taught at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCLA_School_of_Law" title="UCLA School of Law" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">UCLA School of Law</a> since 2002,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-Bio-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[5]</a> receiving tenure in 2007. Prior to joining the faculty at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,Los_Angeles" title="University of California, Los Angeles" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">UCLA</a>, he was the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M.Olin_Foundation" title="John M. Olin Foundation" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">John M. Olin</a> Fellow at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USC_Gould_School_of_Law" title="USC Gould School of Law" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">University of Southern California Law School</a> from 2001-02.<h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Scholarship[</h2><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:We_the_Corporations_Cover.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: url(" w="w" resources="resources" src="src" mediawiki.skinning="mediawiki.skinning" images="images" magnify-clip-ltr.svg="magnify-clip-ltr.svg" e="e" display="display" block="block" text-indent="text-indent" px="px" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap" overflow="overflow" hidden="hidden" width="width" height="height" user-select="user-select" none="none">Winkler' most recent book </a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_the_Corporations:How_American_Businesses_Won_Their_Civil_Rights" class="mw-redirect" title="We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights</a>,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-:0-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[1]</a> was a finalist for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Book_Award_for_Nonfiction" title="National Book Award for Nonfiction" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Book_Critics_Circle_Award" title="National Book Critics Circle Award" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">National Book Critics Circle Award</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bar_Association" title="American Bar Association" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Book_Award" class="mw-redirect" title="California Book Award" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">California Book Award</a>, and received the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribes(society)" title="Scribes (society)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Scribes Book Award</a>. The book chronicles the astonishing story of one of the most successful yet least well-known “civil rights movements” in American history. Uncovering the roots of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v.FEC" title="Citizens United v. FEC" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Citizens United v. FEC</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a> On We the Corporations, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zephyr_Teachout" title="Zephyr Teachout" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Zephyr Teachout</a> in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Book_Review" title="The New York Times Book Review" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">New York Times Sunday</a> cover book review said “Winkler’s chief contribution is to show how corporations have been some of the most important innovators in American law, shaping it for good and often ill.”<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[7]</a> Another review by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_Media" title="Vox Media" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Vox</a> held “it is deeply shocking that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_the_Corporations" title="We the Corporations" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">We the Corporations</a> is not boring”<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[8]</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States" title="Supreme Court of the United States" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">United States Supreme Court</a> Justice <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Breyer" title="Stephen Breyer" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Stephen Breyer</a> was quoted as saying "it is a good book."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-9" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[9]</a>Winkler's writing on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_bear_arms" class="mw-redirect" title="Right to bear arms" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">right to bear arms</a>, which is notable for nuanced position—recognizing both the individual right to possess firearms and the legitimacy of effective gun control—has been cited by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States" title="Supreme Court of the United States" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">U.S. Supreme Court</a> and numerous lower courts.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-10" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[10]</a> His book Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America details the importance of the right to bear arms throughout American history, while also showing how that right has been balanced with laws to enhance gun safety since the founding era. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Yorker" title="The New Yorker" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The New Yorker</a> called the book "remarkably nuanced"<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-11" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[11]</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_Street_Journal" title="The Wall Street Journal" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Wall Street Journal</a> called it "an engaging and provocative legal drama … and a fascinating survey of the misunderstood history of guns and gun control in America.”<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-12" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[12]</a> Gunfight was later the subject of question on the American game show <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeopardy!" title="Jeopardy!" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Jeopardy!</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-13" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[13]</a>Winkler has also written extensively on legal history topics including the origins of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance" title="Campaign finance" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">campaign finance law</a>,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-14" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[14]</a> the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffrage" title="Suffrage" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">women's suffrage movement</a>,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-15" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[15]</a> the regulation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party" title="Political party" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">political parties</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-16" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[16]</a> He has also done <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_research" title="Quantitative research" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">quantitative research</a> on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_law" title="Constitutional law" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">constitutional law</a> issues<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-17" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[17]</a> including a study that disproved the well accepted legal maxim that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny" title="Strict scrutiny" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">strict scrutiny</a> is "'strict' in theory, but fatal in fact."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-W2006-18" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[18]</a> He found that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalism" title="Federalism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">federalism</a> was a hidden factor in free speech jurisprudence, with nearly 56% of federal laws burdening core speech rights upheld, compared to 23% of state laws and only 3% of local laws.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-19" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[19]</a> Along with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize" title="Pulitzer Prize" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Pulitzer Prize</a>-winning historian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Levy" title="Leonard Levy" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Leonard Levy</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCLA_School_of_Law" title="UCLA School of Law" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">UCLA School of Law</a> professor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Karst" class="mw-redirect" title="Kenneth Karst" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Kenneth Karst</a>, Winkler edited the six-volume Encyclopedia of the American Constitution.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-20" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[20]</a>Winkler's popular writing has also appeared in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times" title="The New York Times" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">New York Times</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Review_of_Books" title="The New York Review of Books" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">New York Review of Books</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_Street_Journal" title="The Wall Street Journal" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Wall Street Journal</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post" title="The Washington Post" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Washington Post</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times" title="Los Angeles Times" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Los Angeles Times</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Republic" title="The New Republic" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">New Republic</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlantic" title="The Atlantic" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Atlantic</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate(magazine)" title="Slate (magazine)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Slate</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCOTUSblog" title="SCOTUSblog" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Scotusblog</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Beast" title="The Daily Beast" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Daily Beast.</a> He is a frequent commentator about legal issues and has appeared on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_the_Nation" title="Face the Nation" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Face the Nation</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN" title="CNN" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">CNN</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Nightly_News" title="NBC Nightly News" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">NBC Nightly News</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-SPAN" title="C-SPAN" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">C-SPAN</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_NewsHour" title="PBS NewsHour" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">PBS Newshour</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_News" title="ABC News" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">ABC News</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Things_Considered" title="All Things Considered" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">All Things Considered</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Edition" title="Morning Edition" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Morning Edition</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketplace(Canadian_TV_program)" title="Marketplace (Canadian TV program)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Marketplace</a>.<h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Awards and honors[</h2>Winkler has won multiple awards and honors for his work including the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribes_(society)" title="Scribes (society)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Scribes Book Award</a>. His book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_the_Corporations" title="We the Corporations" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">We the Corporations</a> also made him a finalist for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Book_Award_for_Nonfiction" title="National Book Award for Nonfiction" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Book_Critics_Circle_Award" title="National Book Critics Circle Award" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">National Book Critics Circle Award</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bar_Association" title="American Bar Association" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Book_Award" class="mw-redirect" title="California Book Award" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">California Book Award</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-21" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[21]</a> In 2018, his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_mater" title="Alma mater" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">alma mater</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_University" title="New York University" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">NYU</a>, awarded him its Law Teaching Award, which is given to great teachers for their scholarship and dedication to the education and training of law students.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-22" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[22]</a> Winkler also currently serves on the board of directors at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brennan_Center_for_Justice" title="Brennan Center for Justice" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Brennan Center</a> for Justice.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Winkler#cite_note-23" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[23]</a><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Reference</h2><div align="left">===</div><div align="left"><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/roe-supreme-court-justices-1378046/">
</a></div><div align="left"><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/roe-supreme-court-justices-1378046/" style="">https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/roe-supreme-court-justices-1378046/</a></div><div align="left">
</div><div align="left">no lnx
at?

an evangelical victory party in front of the Supreme Court to celebrate

the downfall of Roe v. Wade last week, a prominent Capitol Hill

religious leader was caught on a hot mic making a bombshell claim: that

she prays with sitting justices inside the high court. “We’re the only

people who do that,” Peggy Nienaber said.

This disclosure was

a serious matter on its own terms, but it also suggested a major

conflict of interest. Nienaber’s ministry’s umbrella organization,

Liberty Counsel, frequently brings lawsuits before the Supreme Court. In

fact, the conservative majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health,

which ended nearly 50 years of federal abortion rights, cited an amicus

brief authored by Liberty Counsel in its ruling.

[Related Stories
Texas' Most Famous Abortion Provider Is Closing Its Doors
The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point: 'Roe v. Wade' Edition]

In

other words: Sitting Supreme Court justices have prayed together with

evangelical leaders whose bosses were bringing cases and arguments

before the high court.

Nienaber is Liberty Counsel’s

executive director of DC Ministry, as well as the vice president of

Faith & Liberty, whose ministry offices sit directly behind the

Supreme Court. She spoke to a livestreamer who goes by Connie IRL,

seemingly unaware she was being recorded. “You actually pray with the

Supreme Court justices?” the livestreamer asked. “I do,” Nienaber said.

“They will pray with us, those that like us to pray with them.” She did

not specify which justices prayed with her, but added with a chortle,

“Some of them don’t!” The livestreamer then asked if Nienaber

ministered to the justices in their homes or at her office. Neither, she

said. “We actually go in there.”

Nienaber intended her

comments, broadcast on YouTube, to be “totally off the record,” she says

in the clip. That’s likely because such an arrangement presents a

problem for the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, which not only

weighed in on the Dobbs case as a friend of the court, but also

litigated and won a 9-0 Supreme Court victory this May in a case

centered on the public display of a religious flag.

The Supreme Court did not respond to a request for comment. Liberty Counsel’s founder, Mat Staver, strenuously

denied that the in-person ministering to justices that Nienaber bragged

about exists. “It’s entirely untrue,” Staver tells Rolling Stone.

“There is just no way that has happened.” He adds: “She has prayer

meetings for them, not with them.” Asked if he had an explanation for

Nienaber’s direct comments to the contrary, Staver says, “I don’t.”

But

the founder of the ministry, who surrendered its operations to Liberty

Counsel in 2018, tells Rolling Stone that he hosted prayer sessions with

conservative justices in their chambers from the late-1990s through

when he left the group in the mid-2010s. Rob

Schenck, who launched the ministry under the name Faith and Action in

the Nation’s Capital, described how the organization forged ministry

relationships with Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and the late

Antonin Scalia, saying he would pray with them inside the high court.

Nienaber was Schenk’s close associate in that era, and continued with

the ministry after it came under the umbrella of Liberty Counsel.

Louis

Virelli is a professor at Stetson University College of Law who wrote a

book about Supreme Court recusals. He’s blunt in his assessment:

“Praying with a group that filed an amicus brief with a court,” he says,

“is a problem.”

Barbara Abshire, center, of Baltimore, and Peggy

Nienaber of Lorton, Md., unpack flowers for use in the "Encircle the

Court in Prayer," event led by Christian faith organizations on the eve

of the Supreme Court arguments on President Obama's health care

legislation, in Washington, Sunday, March 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn

Martin)

Peggy Nienaber, right, at an event outside the Supreme

Court led by Christian faith organizations on the eve of the Supreme

Court arguments on President Obama’s health care legislation in 2012.

In

the shadow of the high court, across the street from its chambers, sits

a cluster of unassuming row houses known only to the initiated as

“Ministry Row.” The strip is host to evangelical political groups that

have spent the past several decades pushing Beltway conservatives to

embrace the religious right’s political causes — and, most of all,

reverse Roe v. Wade. The street view offers few clues as to what

transpires behind the painted brick facades, save for a granite slab

inscribed with the Ten Commandments planted in the grassy patch before a modest cream-colored Victorian with maroon trim.

The

home serves as Faith & Liberty’s headquarters. The Ten Commandments

statue had been placed there by Schenck, an evangelical minister famous

for orchestrating high-profile anti-abortion stunts, such as shoving an

aborted fetus in a plastic container into the face of former President

Bill Clinton during the 1992 campaign. Schenck had opened the

ministry in the 1990s as Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, a

nonprofit dedicated to ending federal abortion rights. The organization

operated on a “utopian ‘trickle-up’ theory” of influence: building

access “higher and higher up within the government, until we got to the

top, my ultimate target — members of Congress, U.S. senators, cabinet

secretaries, Supreme Court justices — even presidents,” Schenck wrote in

his 2018 autobiography.

The group established a strong

foothold in both chambers of Congress and, eventually, the White House.

But Faith and Action ultimately directed its energies toward the

judicial branch. “There were no pro-life groups directly approaching

the judges and justices, who shaped abortion law simply by their

precedent-setting decisions,” Schenck wrote. “We knew we were stuck with

members of the federal bench — they were appointed for life — so why

not convert them while in office?” (Schenck has since reversed course:

He is now a fierce critic of evangelical politicking and says Liberty

Counsel assumed Faith and Action’s operations in 2018. He says he has no

knowledge of the group’s inner workings after he left.)

At

first, the high court regarded Faith and Action and its peer

organizations as nuisances, according to Schenck. “Justice Thomas would

say to me, ‘You know those groups outside? Are they crazy or are they

good people?’” Schenck recalls in an interview with Rolling Stone. When

Schenck first began his approach in 1994, prayer activities on the

Supreme Court’s property was considered an act of demonstration, and

therefore illegal. Eventually, Justices Alito, Scalia, and Thomas would

embrace Schenck, he says, and pray with him in various corners of the

high court’s grounds — including, occasionally, in their chambers.

(Chief Justice John Roberts, meanwhile, remained more guarded and

skeptical of such groups’ influence.)

To pray with the

justices was to perform a sort of “spiritual conditioning,” Schenck

explains. “The intention all along was to embolden the conservative

justices by loaning them a kind of spiritual moral support — to give

them an assurance that not only was there a large number of people

behind them, but in fact, there was divine support for very strong

and unapologetic opinions from them.” Prayer is a powerful communication

tool in the evangelical tradition: The speaker assumes the mantle of

the divine, and to disagree with an offered prayer is akin to sin. “It’s

just not common to interrupt or challenge a prayer,” Schenck explains.

“That’s not something a devout Supreme Court justice would ever consider

doing.” That was true even for the devout Catholic justices, such as

Scalia, who joined the evangelical Faith and Action members in prayer,

Schenck says.

Sometimes the prayers would be general; other times, on specific subjects, such as ending abortion,

according to Schenck. He says Faith and Action took assiduous care to

avoid speaking blatantly about cases in the Supreme Court’s pipeline,

discussing the political agenda only in broad strokes. Even so, under

the time period Schenck describes, prayers with the justices occurred

as Faith and Action signed onto several amicus briefs for landmark

SCOTUS cases such as Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, which ultimately

upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.

Schenck

walked away from his life on the Hill after receiving a late-career

doctorate on the teachings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who

questioned the collaborative relationship between Adolf Hitler and

1930s German evangelicals. He drew parallels between the Republican

Party and American evangelicalism, concerned that he’d weaponized

worship to fuel a hate-filled agenda. No longer an anti-abortion activist, Schenck views his past efforts with regret. “Prayer

is a positive exercise, until it’s politicized — and too many prayers

that I and my colleagues offered in the presence of the justices were

political prayers,” he explains. He also believes the work “contributed

to the internal moral and ethical corruption of the justices at the

court,” he says.

“I was sure, while we were doing it, it would be

a positive contribution to our public life,” Schenck says. “It didn’t

have the effect I thought it would. In some ways, it set the stage for

the reversal of Roe, which I now think of as a social catastrophe.”

When

Liberty Counsel absorbed Faith and Action in 2018, Peggy Nienaber, who

had worked alongside Schenck since at least 2005, continued with the

group. In a July 2021 conversation with Staver, Liberty Counsel’s

founder, Nienaber described the group’s new incarnation as similar to

Faith and Action’s mission. It’s “the ministry right here on Capitol

Hill,” she said, devoted to “changing the hearts and minds of not only

our elected officials, but the staffers all the way down.” Nienaber

highlighted Faith & Liberty’s proximity to the court by pointing to

the window of the conference room where the justices decide their cases.

”When you’re sitting in that conference room, you cannot miss those Ten

Commandments,” she said. (Faith & Liberty sits so close to the

Supreme Court, in fact, that it has been included in the “buffer zone”

surrounding the high court, shut off to protesters and the public.

There’s irony here, given that Liberty Counsel has for decades 

litigated to abolish buffer zones near abortion clinics.)

“There’s

a lot of things that Faith & Liberty does — and that you do — that

obviously we can’t put in an email, can’t put in a newsletter, can’t put

in a press release,” Staver said to Nienaber during their chat,

“because it’s private relationships that are spiritually

transformative.” Nienaber’s social media accounts show her hobnobbing

with high-profile Republicans such as Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) and

former Vice President Mike Pence. She hung close to the confirmation of

Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018: She posted photographs from inside the

Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing room, as well as a screenshot of

her invitation to Kavanaugh’s swearing-in ceremony.

Nienaber

told Rolling Stone, “I do not socialize with the justices.” Yet she has

posed for photos with Justices Kavanaugh and Thomas, calling the latter a

“friend” in a Facebook post, praising him for “passing by our ministry

center to attend church and always taking time to say hello.”

In

addition to her proximity to conservative power players, Nienaber has

championed the plaintiffs who have brought right-wing religious causes

before the Supreme Court. Ahead of oral arguments, she prayed with Joe

Kennedy, the football coach who recently succeeded in his suit to allow

prayer during football games. Liberty Counsel also filed an amicus brief

in that case, calling on the court to rule that the school district

“engaged in viewpoint discrimination against Coach Kennedy’s private

speech.”

Nienaber was recorded telling the livestreamer

that she prayed with Supreme Court justices on June 27, the Monday

after the high court issued the Dobbs ruling. She was at a

celebration she helped organize with Sean Feucht, a prominent

Christian-worship musician. Nienaber identifies herself only as “Peggy”

in the footage, but she references the ministry she runs behind the

court and its 850-pound replica of the Ten Commandments. For most of the

interview, Nienaber is not on camera. But when the video pans on her

briefly, she can be seen wearing the same dress and necklace she has on

in a selfie with Feucht posted to Faith & Liberty’s website.

Last

week, Rolling Stone spoke to Patty Bills, the director of constituency

affairs at Faith & Liberty. Bills did not want to discuss Faith

& Liberty’s ministry practices, citing privacy concerns. Bills would

not, however, deny that Faith & Liberty ministers to Supreme Court

justices. “I never said we didn’t — I just said we provide privacy,” she

said.

Staver, in denying that members of Faith & Liberty

prayed with Supreme Court justices, says that such prayers would have

been inappropriate, especially given Liberty Counsel’s litigation

efforts. “That’s why we wouldn’t do that,” he says. “And especially

on cases that are pending before the Supreme Court, we would make a very

clear firewall. We just would never do something like that.”

In

a written statement to Rolling Stone, Nienaber says of her hot-mic

comments: “I do not recall making such a statement. I listened to the

livestream, and I did not hear such a statement.” She adds that Covid

restrictions have limited public access to the Supreme Court: “The

public has not been allowed access, and I am no different.” When she has

had access to public areas of the court, she says, “I will generally

silently pray for the justices, their staff, and the Court.”

But

after this story was published, Nienaber acknowledged her remarks and

conceded she has prayed personally with Supreme Court justices.

Despite speaking in the present tense on the livestream, Nienaber

asserted, “My comment was referring to past history and not practice of

the past several years.” Nienaber added: “During most of the history up

to early 2020, I met with many people who wanted or needed prayer. Since

early 2020, access to the Supreme Court has been restricted due to

COVID. It has been many years since I prayed with a Justice.”

Liberty

Counsel was founded in 1989 by Staver. The organization is an uncommon

hybrid of religious ministry and legal practice, dedicated to “advancing

religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the family through

strategic litigation.” Staver is the organization’s senior pastor as

well as its top litigator. This mix of law and religion is central to

Staver’s career; he previously served as dean of the law school at

Liberty University, founded by the televangelist Jerry Falwell.

Staver has argued numerous cases in front of the Supreme Court. He

started in 1994 in a case that struck a blow against protest-limiting

buffer zones near abortion clinics. In the court’s most recent term,

Staver argued and won a 9-0 judgment in Shurtleff v. Boston, a case in

which the court ruled a Christian flag couldn’t be excluded from a

public flagpole that displayed a rotating assortment of secular flags.

Staver also wrote an amicus brief in the Dobbs case that purports to tie abortion and birth control to eugenics.

Calling Roe “the low watermark in this Court’s history,” it argued that

Dobbs was ”an ideal vehicle for the Court to finally overrule Roe v.

Wade and its progeny, which have constitutionalized eugenic abortions as

a fundamental right.”

In the Dobbs majority opinion written by

Justice Alito, he cited this brief to impugn the motives of

pro-abortion-rights advocates, arguing that “some such supporters have

been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American

population,” adding, “it is beyond dispute that Roe has had that

demographic effect,” because “a highly disproportionate percentage of

aborted fetuses are Black.”

When Roe v. Wade was reversed, Staver

was triumphant: “I have dedicated my life to defend life and overturn

the bloody decisions of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey,” he

wrote. “This global earthquake will impact the world.”

Prayer

unto itself in no way presents a conflict of interest for the justices,

says Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow of governance studies at the

Brookings Institution, not even with a group like Faith & Liberty

that has business before the court. Justices are allowed to visit there

with whomever they’d like in their private chambers, and have socialized

with interested parties throughout the court’s history. President

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for example, routinely played cards with the

high court’s magistrates, and Scalia went duck hunting with former Vice

President Dick Cheney. What would amount to an ethical concern would be

if they’re discussing those cases as they pray — “or if the prayer

sessions would influence how justices rule in a particular case,” says Adam Winkler, a Supreme Court expert at the University of California Los Angeles.

But

even among legal experts troubled by the court’s ties, they acknowledge

there are few remedies to address ethical conflicts. A federal statute

governs when judges and justices should step away from cases, but the

Constitution leaves questions of partiality to the justices themselves.

Their general unwillingness to step aside isn’t necessarily a bad thing,

Virelli, the Stetson law professor, says: When justices recuse

themselves from a case, no one replaces them, a scenario that can create

more problems than it solves. “The court changes shape,” he explains.

“That makes the decision to recuse difficult.”

That the justices

are their own keepers in regard to those rules creates complications,

however, says Steve Vladeck, a constitutional-law expert at the

University of Texas Law School. The relationship between Faith &

Liberty and Liberty Counsel, as described by Rolling Stone, “could make a

reasonable observer worry about the appearance of partiality,” he says.

But the concerns the scenario raised shouldn’t be about recusal. “What

that really reveals is how problematic it is that there isn’t an

objective mechanism to resolve these sorts of questions.”

For Winkler,

the greater concern is not prayers, but the “religious-themed”

decisions he’s seen come down from the high court this term, pointing to

not only the Roe reversal but also opinions that permit unchecked free

exercise of First Amendment rights. “The problematic aspect isn’t

whether they’re praying,” Winkler says, “but that several justices seem

committed to reading their religion into the Constitution.”
</div>==
jane mayer che...In all, by the time it closed its doors in 2005, the Olin foundation had supported 11 separate programs at Harvard, burnishing the foundation's name and ideas and proving that even the best-endowed American university would allow an outside ideological group to build "beachheads," so long as the project was properly packaged and funded.On top of these programs, the foundation doled out $8 million to more than a hundred John M. Olin faculty fellows. These funds enabled scores of young academics to take the time needed to do research and write in order to further their careers. The roster of recipients includes John Yoo, the legal scholar who went on to become the author of the George W. Bush administration's controversial "torture memo" legalizing the American government's brutalization of terror suspects.Without the rigorous peer-review standards required by prestigious academic publications, the Olin foundation was able to inject into the mainstream a number of works whose scholarship was debatable at best. For example, Olin-foundation funds enabled John R. Lott Jr., then an Olin fellow at the University of Chicago, to write his influential book More Guns, Less Crime. In the work, Lott argued that more guns actually reduce crime and that the legalization of concealed weapons would make citizens safer.Politicians advocating weaker gun-control laws frequently cited Lott's findings. But according to Adam Winkler, the author of Gunfight, Lott's scholarship was suspect. Winkler wrote that "Lott's claimed source for this information was 'national surveys,"' which under questioning he revised to just one survey that he and research assistants had conducted. When asked to provide the data, Winkler recounts, Lott said he had lost it in a computer crash. Asked for any evidence of the survey, writes Winkler, "Lott said he had no such evidence." (Proving that the recipients of Olin funds weren't ideologically monolithic, Winkler, too, had received funds from the foundation.)===<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852/">https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852/</a>no lnxBUSINESS‘Corporations Are People’ Is Built on an Incredible 19th-Century LieHow a farcical series of events in the 1880s produced an enduring and controversial legal precedent
By Adam Winkler[An archival caricature of a railroad baron swallowing America’s train linesA 1907 caricature of the railroad baron Edward H. Harriman swallowing America’s train lines. (Luther Bradley / Library of Congress / Corbis / Getty)]MARCH 5, 2018Somewhat counterintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. How exactly did corporations come to be understood as “people” bestowed with the most fundamental constitutional rights? The answer can be found in a bizarre—even farcical—series of lawsuits more than 130 years ago involving a lawyer who lied to the Supreme Court, an ethically challenged justice, and one of the most powerful corporations of the day.That corporation was the Southern Pacific Railroad, owned by the robber baron Leland Stanford. In 1881, after California lawmakers imposed a special tax on railroad property, Southern Pacific pushed back, making the bold argument that the law was an act of unconstitutional discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment. Adopted after the Civil War to protect the rights of freed slaves, that amendment guarantees  every “person” the “equal protection of the laws.” Stanford’s railroad argued that it was a person too, reasoning that just as the Constitution prohibited discrimination on the basis of racial identity, so did it bar discrimination against Southern Pacific on the basis of its corporate identity.The head lawyer representing Southern Pacific was a man named Roscoe Conkling. A leader of the Republican Party for more than a decade, Conkling had even been nominated to the Supreme Court twice. He begged off both times, the second time after the Senate had confirmed him. (He remains the last person to turn down a Supreme Court seat after winning confirmation). More than most lawyers, Conkling was seen by the justices as a peer.It was a trust Conkling would betray. As he spoke before the Court on Southern Pacific’s behalf, Conkling recounted an astonishing tale. In the 1860s, when he was a young congressman, Conkling had served on the drafting committee that was responsible for writing the Fourteenth Amendment. Then the last member of the committee still living, Conkling told the justices that the drafters had changed the wording of the amendment, replacing “citizens” with “persons” in order to cover corporations too. Laws referring to “persons,” he said, have “by long and constant acceptance … been held to embrace artificial persons as well as natural persons.” Conkling buttressed his account with a surprising piece of evidence: a musty old journal he claimed was a previously unpublished record of the deliberations of the drafting committee.Years later, historians would discover that Conkling’s journal was real but his story was a fraud. The journal was in fact a record of the congressional committee’s deliberations, but, upon close examination, it offered no evidence that the drafters intended to protect corporations. It showed, in fact, that the language of the equal-protection clause was never changed from “citizen” to “person.” So far as anyone can tell, the rights of corporations were not raised in the public debates over the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment or in any of the states’ ratifying conventions. And prior to Conkling’s appearance on behalf of Southern Pacific, no member of the drafting committee had ever suggested that corporations were covered.There’s reason to suspect that Conkling’s deception was uncovered back in his time too. The justices held onto the case for three years without ever issuing a decision, until Southern Pacific unexpectedly settled the case. Then, shortly after, another case from Southern Pacific reached the Supreme Court, raising the exact same legal question. The company had the same team of lawyers, with the exception of Conkling. Tellingly, Southern Pacific’s lawyers omitted any mention of Conkling’s drafting history or his journal. Had those lawyers believed Conkling, it would have been malpractice to leave out his story.When the Court issued its decision on this second case, the justices expressly declined to decide if corporations were people. The dispute could be, and was, resolved on other grounds, prompting an angry rebuke from one justice, Stephen J. Field, who castigated his colleagues for failing to address “the important constitutional questions involved.” “At the present day, nearly all great enterprises are conducted by corporations,” he wrote, and they deserved to know if they had equal rights too.Rumored to carry a gun with him at all times, the colorful Field was the only sitting justice ever arrested—and the charge was murder. He was innocent, but nonetheless guilty of serious ethical violations in the Southern Pacific cases, at least by modern standards: A confidant of Leland Stanford, Field had advised the company on which lawyers to hire for this very series of cases and thus should have recused himself from them. He refused to—and, worse, while the first case was pending, covertly shared internal memoranda of the justices with Southern Pacific’s legal team.The rules of judicial ethics were not well developed in the Gilded Age, however, and the self-assured Field, who feared the forces of socialism, did not hesitate to weigh in. Taxing the property of railroads differently, he said, was like allowing deductions for property “owned by white men or by old men, and not deducted if owned by black men or young men.”So, with Field on the Court, still more twists were yet to come. The Supreme Court’s opinions are officially published in volumes edited by an administrator called the reporter of decisions. By tradition, the reporter writes up a summary of the Court’s opinion and includes it at the beginning of the opinion. The reporter in the 1880s was J. C. Bancroft Davis, whose wildly inaccurate summary of the Southern Pacific case said that the Court had ruled that “corporations are persons within … the Fourteenth Amendment.” Whether his summary was an error or something more nefarious—Davis had once been the president of the Newburgh and New York Railway company—will likely never be known.Field nonetheless saw Davis’s erroneous summary as an opportunity. A few years later, in an opinion in an unrelated case, Field wrote that “corporations are persons within the meaning” of the Fourteenth Amendment. “It was so held in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad,” explained Field, who knew very well that the Court had done no such thing.His gambit worked. In the following years, the case would be cited over and over by courts across the nation, including the Supreme Court, for deciding that corporations had rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.Indeed, the faux precedent in the Southern Pacific case would go on to be used by a Supreme Court that in the early 20th century became famous for striking down numerous economic regulations, including federal child-labor laws, zoning laws, and wage-and-hour laws. Meanwhile, in cases like the notorious Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), those same justices refused to read the Constitution as protecting the rights of African Americans, the real intended beneficiaries of the Fourteenth Amendment. Between 1868, when the amendment was ratified, and 1912, the Supreme Court would rule on 28 cases involving the rights of African Americans and an astonishing 312 cases on the rights of corporations.The day back in 1882 when the Supreme Court first heard Roscoe Conkling’s argument, the New-York Daily Tribune featured a story on the case with a headline that would turn out to be prophetic: “Civil Rights of Corporations.” Indeed, in a feat of deceitful legal alchemy, Southern Pacific and its wily legal team had, with the help of an audacious Supreme Court justice, set up the Fourteenth Amendment to be more of a bulwark for the rights of businesses than the rights of minorities.

...Adam Winkler is a professor at the UCLA School of Law. He is the author of We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights and Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.<[boad code]

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Corporate-personhood-actually-limits-12721448.php">...ctivists in Wyoming have been gathering signatures for a ballot measure calling for a constitutional amendment to <a href="http://www.gillettenewsrecord.com/news/wyoming/article_9023a7aa-69a8-528c-b800-4f90b6bf0f97.html" style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 2px solid var(--brand);">overturn Citizens United</a>, the controversial Supreme Court decision saying that corporations had the same right as individuals to spend money to influence elections. The proposed 28th Amendment, which has already been endorsed by <a href="http://reclaimtheamericandream.org/progress-amend/" style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 2px solid var(--brand);">19 states</a> and <a href="http://reclaimtheamericandream.org/organizations-amend/" style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1); text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 2px solid var(--brand);">public interest groups</a> like Common Cause and Public Citizen, would limit rights to people — and declare, once and for all, that corporations are not people.

Especially in the wake of President Trump’s business-friendly tax bill, frustration with corporate power...Corporate personhood is a foundational principle of business law. It means that a corporation has its own independent identity in the eyes of the law. The corporate entity is wholly separate from the people who form it, own it, manage it or finance it. That’s why if your toaster explodes, you have to sue the company that makes the toaster. You can’t sue the company’s shareholders. The company and its shareholders are distinct legal persons, with different legal rights and duties.<div id="module_B_first" class="bc-recirculation bc-recirculation-b" style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);">Wyoming activists and Common Cause pin decisions like Citizens United and the subsequent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/us/hobby-lobby-case-supreme-court-contraception.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 2px solid var(--brand);">Hobby Lobby case</a>, which held that corporations have religious liberty rights under a federal statute, on corporate personhood. In fact, however, the Supreme Court rarely treats corporations as their own legal persons in cases dealing with the constitutional rights of corporations.And there have been many such cases.The first Supreme Court case on the rights of corporations was in 1809. (For some perspective, the first Supreme Court cases on the rights of African Americans and women were not decided until 1857 and 1873, respectively.) Over the past 200 years, corporations have brought lawsuits seeking nearly every individual right, from the freedom of speech to the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures....>The Supreme Court has often ruled in favor of corporations — but not because corporations are people. The justices typically say instead that corporations have rights because they are made up of people. Corporations take on the rights of their members....In the Hobby Lobby case, for example, the Supreme Court allowed the national chain of craft stores to exclude birth control from employee health plans on grounds of religion. Although the case was brought in the name of Hobby Lobby, the corporation, to challenge a legal duty imposed on Hobby Lobby, the corporation, Justice Samuel Alito’s...said the birth control requirement burdened the religious liberty of Hobby Lobby’s owners, David and Barbara Green and their children...In Citizens United, the Supreme Court never says that corporations are people. It describes corporations as “associations of citizens,” focusing again on the members. Corporations today have nearly all the same rights as individuals because the court allows them to assert the rights of their members, who are themselves individuals.<..It looks like the justices may take the same approach in themaster cake caswe]who refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. Although Colorado imposes the legal duty not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation on the bakery, a for-profit corporation, the justices during oral argument focused almost exclusively on the rights of the bakery owner.Of course, the bakery owner would insist on the strict legal separation between him and the corporation if a customer slipped and fell in the store. Yet he wants to ignore that separation when deciding which customers to serve. He wants to, well, eat his cake and have it, too.<div id="module_B_last" class="bc-recirculation bc-recirculation-b" style="-webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);">The Supreme Court should instead treat corporations as people — as separate and distinct legal entities with rights of their own. Rather than simply allowing corporations to assert the rights of their members, we should ask which rights corporate entities should have.In a few cases over the past 200 years, the Supreme Court has treated corporations as independent people, separate and apart from their members. The result, surprisingly, has been to limit the rights of corporations.A century ago, when the government tried to break up the <a href="https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2016/01/31/trust-bust-american-tobacco-company-organized-1890" style="text-decoration-line: none; border-bottom: 2px solid var(--brand);">tobacco trust</a>, the tobacco firms claimed that their right against self-incrimination would be violated if their own executives were required to testify against them. The Supreme Court disagreed. The executives and the corporations were wholly separate legal persons and the Fifth Amendment protects only against self-incrimination.The proposed 28th Amendment, however, would take all rights away from corporations. But that cannot be the right answer.<div id="module_A_last" class="bc-recirculation bc-recirculation-a" style="font-weight: bold; float: left; margin-left: -310px; margin-right: 10px; width: 300px; -webkit-text-stroke: 0.45px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);">If corporations do not have property rights, the government could seize Google’s campus and turn it into a park without paying a dime in compensation. Without due process rights, Apple would not be able to challenge the FBI’s demand to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone. Newspaper corporations could be censored at the whim of Congress.Corporate persons need certain basic rights to fulfill their economic function. But not until Citizens United and Hobby Lobby were business corporations thought to have a right to influence elections for public office or have religious liberty entitling them to exemptions from laws that apply to every other business. As legally organized entities required by law to pursue wealth, corporations lack the autonomy and conscience upon which these rights are based.The question is not whether corporations should have rights but which rights corporations should have. Today’s steady expansion of corporate rights is a product of giving corporations the same rights as their members. Instead, we should treat corporations as separate legal persons — with only those rights appropriate for corporations.
 Ciara Torres-Spelliscy
, Corporate Citizen?
----The Divine Right of CapitalDethroning the Corporate Aristocracyby Kelly, Marjorie3.4 out of 5 starsBook - 2001330.122 Kellysjpl
We the CorporationsHow American Businesses Won Their Civil Rightsby Winkler, Adam4.3 out of 5 starsBook - 2018346.7306 WinklerAvailable =harv law rev of winkler bk we the corps<a href="https://harvardlawreview.org/2019/05/corporate-personhood-v-corporate-statehood/">https://harvardlawreview.org/2019/05/corporate-personhood-v-corporate-statehood/</a>
In 2011, at the Iowa State Fair, presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave a pitch for why fairgoers should support him in the upcoming caucuses.<sup class="footnote-ref js-article-aside-trigger " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 4px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 16.65px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; display: inline-block; width: 17px; height: 17px; position: relative; text-align: center; user-select: none;"><span class="ref-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s;">1<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><sup class="footnote-ref js-article-aside-trigger " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 4px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 16.65px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; display: inline-block; width: 17px; height: 17px; position: relative; text-align: center; user-select: none;"><span class="close-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; font-weight: 300; position: absolute; left: 4px; top: 1px; opacity: 0;">×<cite class="article-aside footnote short-crop right article-aside--abridged" id="cite_right_1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; display: block; position: absolute; width: 140px; left: auto; z-index: 10; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; opacity: 1; right: -170px;"><span class="article-aside-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 19.2px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; display: block; position: relative; height: 62px; overflow: hidden;"><span class="footnote-num" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">1. Ashley Parker, “<em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Corporations Are People,” Romney Tells Iowa Hecklers Angry over His Tax Policy, <span class="small-caps" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-rendering: auto; text-transform: uppercase;">N.Y. TIMES (Aug. 11, 2011), <a href="https://nyti.ms/2vKK5JN" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgb(29, 120, 175);">https://nyti.ms/2vKK5JN</a> [<a href="https://perma.cc/9LDT-2QX7" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgb(29, 120, 175);">https://perma.cc/9LDT-2QX7</a>].<button class="article-aside--more-link js-article-unabridge-trigger" style="cursor: pointer; margin: -2px 0px 0px; width: auto; overflow: visible; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border-width: initial; border-style: none; border-color: initial; padding: 0px; outline: none; z-index: 100; position: relative; display: block;">Show More</button></cite> As an audience milled around him munching on fried snacks, Romney promised to be responsible. “We have to make sure that the promises we make in Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare are promises we can keep, and there are various ways of doing that,” he said. “One is we could raise taxes on people — ”<sup class="footnote-ref js-article-aside-trigger " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 4px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 16.65px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; display: inline-block; width: 17px; height: 17px; position: relative; text-align: center; user-select: none;"><span class="ref-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s;">2<span class="close-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; font-weight: 300; position: absolute; left: 4px; top: 1px; opacity: 0;">×<cite class="article-aside footnote short-crop article-aside--abridged" id="cite_left_1" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; display: block; position: absolute; width: 140px; left: -170px; z-index: 10; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; opacity: 1;"><span class="article-aside-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 19.2px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; display: block; position: relative; height: 62px; overflow: hidden;"><span class="footnote-num" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">2. CNN, <em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Romney: Corporations Are People Too at 00:30, <span class="small-caps" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-rendering: auto; text-transform: uppercase;">YOUTUBE (Aug. 12, 2011), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxUsRedO4UY" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgb(29, 120, 175);">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxUsRedO4UY</a> [<a href="https://perma.cc/5FXB-9RXS" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgb(29, 120, 175);">https://perma.cc/5FXB-9RXS</a>].<button class="article-aside--more-link js-article-unabridge-trigger" style="cursor: pointer; margin: -2px 0px 0px; width: auto; overflow: visible; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border-width: initial; border-style: none; border-color: initial; padding: 0px; outline: none; z-index: 100; position: relative; display: block;">Show More</button></cite><figure class="article-aside book-aside right" id="cite_right_2" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; position: absolute; width: 140px; left: auto; hyphens: manual; right: -170px;"><a class="book-aside-img-mod art-bd" href="https://www.amazon.com/We-Corporations-American-Businesses-Rights/dp/0871407124" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; display: block; float: none; width: 112px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgb(29, 120, 175);"><img class="book-aside-img" src="https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/91VInKy9QXL-224x0-c-default.jpg" alt="Cover for We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: middle; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; line-height: 0; width: 112px; max-width: 100%;" /></a><div class="book-aside-txt-mod txt-bd" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><h3 class="article-aside-h" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 16.8px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/We-Corporations-American-Businesses-Rights/dp/0871407124" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgb(29, 120, 175);">We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights</a></h3><p class="article-aside-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 19.2px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">By Adam Winkler. New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co. Pp. xxiv, 471. $28.95.</div></figure><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Before he could continue, Romney was interrupted by a heckler who had his own idea of who should pay down the nation’s financial obligations: “Corporations!”<sup class="footnote-ref js-article-aside-trigger " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 4px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 16.65px; background: transparent; display: inline-block; width: 17px; height: 17px; position: relative; text-align: center; user-select: none;">3<span class="close-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; font-weight: 300; position: absolute; left: 4px; top: 1px; opacity: 0;">×<cite class="article-aside footnote short-crop" id="cite_left_2" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(253, 250, 243); display: block; position: absolute; width: 140px; left: -170px; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; opacity: 1;"><span class="article-aside-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 19.2px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; display: block;">3. Id. at 00:40.</cite> Romney flashed a smile. “Corporations are people, my friend,” he said.<sup class="footnote-ref js-article-aside-trigger " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 4px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 16.65px; background: transparent; display: inline-block; width: 17px; height: 17px; position: relative; text-align: center; user-select: none;">4<span class="close-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; font-weight: 300; position: absolute; left: 4px; top: 1px; opacity: 0;">×<cite class="article-aside footnote short-crop right" id="cite_right_3" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(253, 250, 243); display: block; position: absolute; width: 140px; left: auto; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; opacity: 1; right: -170px; top: 664px;"><span class="article-aside-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 19.2px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; display: block;">4. Id. at 00:42.</cite> When another audience member responded with a fact — “No, they’re not” — Romney persisted.<sup class="footnote-ref js-article-aside-trigger " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 4px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 16.65px; background: transparent; display: inline-block; width: 17px; height: 17px; position: relative; text-align: center; user-select: none;">5<span class="close-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; font-weight: 300; position: absolute; left: 4px; top: 1px; opacity: 0;">×<cite class="article-aside footnote short-crop" id="cite_left_3" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(253, 250, 243); display: block; position: absolute; width: 140px; left: -170px; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; opacity: 1;"><span class="article-aside-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 19.2px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; display: block;">5. Id. at 00:44.</cite> “Of course they are,” he said.<sup class="footnote-ref js-article-aside-trigger " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 4px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 16.65px; background: transparent; display: inline-block; width: 17px; height: 17px; position: relative; text-align: center; user-select: none;">6<span class="close-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; font-weight: 300; position: absolute; left: 4px; top: 1px; opacity: 0;">×<cite class="article-aside footnote short-crop right" id="cite_right_4" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(253, 250, 243); display: block; position: absolute; width: 140px; left: auto; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; opacity: 1; right: -170px; top: 699px;"><span class="article-aside-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 19.2px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; display: block;">6. Id. at 00:45.</cite> “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”<sup class="footnote-ref js-article-aside-trigger " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 4px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 16.65px; background: transparent; display: inline-block; width: 17px; height: 17px; position: relative; text-align: center; user-select: none;">7<span class="close-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; font-weight: 300; position: absolute; left: 4px; top: 1px; opacity: 0;">×<cite class="article-aside footnote short-crop" id="cite_left_4" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(253, 250, 243); display: block; position: absolute; width: 140px; left: -170px; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; opacity: 1;"><span class="article-aside-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 19.2px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; display: block;">7. Id. at 00:46.</cite> This answer prompted the first heckler to erupt into a belly laugh while a third responded, “It goes into their pockets!”<sup class="footnote-ref js-article-aside-trigger " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 4px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 16.65px; background: transparent; display: inline-block; width: 17px; height: 17px; position: relative; text-align: center; user-select: none;">8<span class="close-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; font-weight: 300; position: absolute; left: 4px; top: 1px; opacity: 0;">×<cite class="article-aside footnote short-crop right" id="cite_right_5" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(253, 250, 243); display: block; position: absolute; width: 140px; left: auto; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; opacity: 1; right: -170px; top: 734px;"><span class="article-aside-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 19.2px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; display: block;">8. Id. at 00:52.</cite> At this point, Romney glowed with the triumph of a law professor giving the closing blow of a Socratic dialogue. “Whose pockets? People’s pockets!” he said before returning to entitlements.<sup class="footnote-ref js-article-aside-trigger " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 4px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 16.65px; background: transparent; display: inline-block; width: 17px; height: 17px; position: relative; text-align: center; user-select: none;">9<span class="close-txt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; font-weight: 300; position: absolute; left: 4px; top: 1px; opacity: 0;">×<cite class="article-aside footnote short-crop" id="cite_left_5" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(253, 250, 243); display: block; position: absolute; width: 140px; left: -170px; transition: opacity 0s ease-in 0s; opacity: 1;" />=<div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-winkler-how-corporations-won-the-right-to-personhood-20180302-story.html">https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-winkler-how-corporations-won-the-right-to-personhood-20180302-story.html</a></div><div>
</div><div>2018</div><div>WINKLER</div><div><div class="byline ArticlePage-byline" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 20px; display: flex; flex-flow: column nowrap; align-items: flex-start; justify-content: normal; max-width: 680px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="published-date ArticlePage-datePublished" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 0.875rem; letter-spacing: 0.2px; text-transform: uppercase; word-break: keep-all; margin-right: 5px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><div class="published-day ArticlePage-datePublished-day" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; white-space: nowrap;">MARCH 2, 2018</div><div class="published-time ArticlePage-datePublished-time" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin-right: 5px; display: inline; white-space: nowrap; margin-left: 5px;">4:10 AM</div></div></div><div class="page-article-container ArticlePage-articleContainer" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 680px; margin: 0px auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="page-article-body ArticlePage-articleBody" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="rich-text-article-body RichTextArticleBody" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="rich-text-article-body-content rich-text-body RichTextArticleBody-body RichTextBody" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.9375rem;">The most high-profile case the Supreme Court will decide this term involves a Colorado bakery that refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. is hardly the first for-profit corporation to claim a constitutional right to refuse to do business with unwanted customers. But in the era of Citizens United, with the Supreme Court increasingly sympathetic to claims of corporate “personhood,” the bakery has a much better chance of winning than it would have had in the past.The long history of corporations claiming the same constitutional rights as “We the People” stretches back over two centuries. The court has sometimes resisted, but in fits and starts, business’s persistence has paid off. Today companies have almost the same rights as you and me, and they use those rights to challenge laws regulating business and the economy.<div class="enhancement Enhancement" data-align-center="" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; width: 680px; clear: both; margin: 30px 0px;"><div class="quote Quote" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 680px; margin: 40px 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px;"><blockquote style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px; text-align: center;">Ever-expanding liberty rights for corporations make it harder for our elected representatives to regulate business for the public good.</blockquote></div></div>More than a century ago, the Supreme Court first considered whether corporations could pick and choose their customers. The corporation that ran Tanforan Racetrack, in San Bruno, later home of the legendary Seabiscuit, challenged a California law requiring places of public amusement to admit anyone with a valid ticket. The track, which had an exclusive deal to sell a particular racing form, wanted to keep out the publisher of a competing guide.<div class="enhancement Enhancement" data-align-center="" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; width: 680px; clear: both; margin: 30px 0px;">The Supreme Court in those days was in the midst of the notoriously business-friendly Lochner era — named after a case striking down a law that had capped the number of hours bakers could be made to work each week. The Lochner court overturned scores of laws curbing business, including federal child labor laws, minimum wage laws and zoning laws. Corporations flooded the courts with constitutional claims.And yet, despite their clear pro-business leanings, the justices of the Lochner era had limits. They held that corporations had “property” rights but not “liberty” rights.Businesses needed basic protections for their property and assets, the court said. If corporations had no property rights, the reasoning went, government could take a company’s factories or buildings to build a park without having to pay any compensation. But corporations did not have liberty rights — the rights associated with autonomy, conscience or political freedom.Applying this principle, the Supreme Court refused to grant corporations the right against self-incrimination. Corporations, unlike people, were not subject to the coercion that right was designed to prevent. Nor did corporations have a constitutional right to spend money on elections. According to a lower court in 1916, the right to influence elections belonged to “natural and not artificial persons.”<div class="enhancement Enhancement" data-align-center="" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; width: 680px; clear: both; margin: 30px 0px;"><div id="nativo_1" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box;">The corporation in the Tanforan Racetrack case insisted that its 1st Amendment rights to associate with only those whom it wanted at the track “were as sacred as those of the citizen at his fireside.” Should the court require the company to admit the rival racing-form producer it would be like allowing “the newspaper reporter to force his way into a private reception and against the wish of the host.”The Supreme Court wasn’t persuaded. California, the justices explained, had the clear authority to regulate businesses open to the public “for the well-being, comfort, and good order of the people.” Moreover, the corporation was claiming a liberty right protected by the Constitution only for “natural, not artificial persons.”The Lochner court’s distinction between property rights and liberty rights couldn’t withstand the concerted efforts of corporations to challenge it. It was weakened by a number of decisions, particularly when news-media corporations won somewhat unique freedom of speech rights. An important turning point came in 1978: In a 5-4 decision, the court held that corporations had the same free speech right as individuals to spend money on ballot-measure campaigns.The majority opinion was written by Justice Lewis Powell Jr., who only months before joining the court in 1971 had written an influential memorandum for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce outlining a strategy for the political mobilization of corporate America. A response to Ralph Nader and the growing consumer rights and environmental movements, the Powell Memorandum is often credited with inspiring businesses to become more vocal in public policy debates.<div class="enhancement Enhancement" data-align-center="" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; width: 680px; clear: both; margin: 30px 0px;">Corporations would use their widening liberty rights, especially freedom of speech, to overturn laws that required graphic tobacco warnings, disclosure of hormones in dairy products, and that restricted advertising practices.Nonetheless, for another 30 years the distinction between natural and artificial persons continued to block corporate spending in candidate campaigns — until Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission. Holding that corporations have the same free speech right as individuals to spend their money to influence candidate elections, the Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 decision was the logical result of Powell’s 1978 decision.<div class="enhancement Enhancement" data-align-center="" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; width: 680px; clear: both; margin: 30px 0px;"><div class="html-module HtmlModule" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 1200px; margin: 0px auto;"><ps-iframe-embed style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"></ps-iframe-embed></div></div>And now Masterpiece Cakeshop is seeking even broader 1st Amendment rights, permitting it to discriminate against same-sex couples. The claim is that a custom wedding cake is a form of expression deserving free speech protection: If the cakemaker doesn’t want to make a cake for two men who are getting married, he shouldn’t have to.<div class="enhancement Enhancement" data-align-center="" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; width: 680px; clear: both; margin: 30px 0px;">Ever-expanding liberty rights for corporations make it harder for our elected representatives to regulate business for the public good. If the court sides with Masterpiece Cakeshop, states like Colorado that believe that civic equality is only possible if businesses that serve the public are open to everyone will be hamstrung in their efforts. Florists, invitation printers, dressmakers, caterers and makeup artists could all claim the goods they provide are as deserving of protection as a wedding cake.If today’s Supreme Court disagrees with the Lochner era justices about the Constitution’s stand on unwanted customers, same-sex couples will see their rights diminish in the marketplace. The rights of corporations, on the other hand, will be secure.Adam Winkler is a professor of law at UCLA. His latest book is “We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights.”</div></div></div></div></div><div>=</div><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852/">https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852/</a><div class="blah" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; display: grid; grid-template-areas: " a="a" b="b" grid-template-columns="grid-template-columns" fr="fr" px="px"><div class="l-articlecontainercontainer" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: none; width: 736px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1; align-self: start; grid-area: 1 / 1 / auto / span 1;"><section class="l-articlesection s-cms-content" itemprop="articleBody" id="article-section-0" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 64px;">Somewhat unintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. How exactly did corporations come to be understood as “people” bestowed with the most fundamental constitutional rights? The answer can be found in a bizarre—even farcical—series of lawsuits over 130 years ago involving a lawyer who lied to the Supreme Court, an ethically challenged justice, and one of the most powerful corporations of the day.<div data-template="hippo/components/ads/article-mobile.html" data-native="standard,gift" data-pos="boxinjector-m" class=" ad-boxinjector-m-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-top: 0px;">That corporation was the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, owned by the robber baron Leland Stanford. In 1881, after California lawmakers imposed a special tax on railroad property, Southern Pacific pushed back, making the bold argument that the law was an act of unconstitutional discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment. Adopted after the Civil War to protect the rights of the freed slaves, that amendment guarantees to every “person” the “equal protection of the laws.” Stanford’s railroad argued that it was a person too, reasoning that just as the Constitution prohibited discrimination on the basis of racial identity, so did it bar discrimination against Southern Pacific on the basis of its corporate identity.</div></section></div><aside class="l-rail l-rail--right l-rail--1" role="complementary" style="box-sizing: inherit; flex-basis: 300px; flex-shrink: 0; min-width: 300px; grid-area: 1 / 2 / span 1 / auto;"><div class="u-dynamic-content js-dynamic-content is-rendered lazyloaded" data-include="/api/2.0/articles/554852/related-articles/?page_size=4 module:theatlantic/js/components/recirc-content" data-insert="false" data-section="side" data-source="curated" data-title="More Stories" data-currentinclude="" style="box-sizing: inherit; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 0.5s ease 0s;"><section class="c-recirc-content" style="box-sizing: inherit; left: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; position: static; right: auto; width: auto;"><div class="c-recirc-contentitems" style="box-sizing: inherit; overflow: auto hidden; white-space: nowrap; width: auto;"><ul class="c-recirc-contentlist" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: flex; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; flex-direction: column;"><li class="c-recirc-item c-recirc-item--" id="recirc-item-3" style="box-sizing: inherit; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(211, 220, 230); display: flex; padding: 16px 0px; position: relative; white-space: normal; width: auto; flex-direction: row-reverse; justify-content: space-between;"><div class="c-recirc-itemcontent" style="box-sizing: inherit; flex-grow: 1;">
</div></li></ul></div></section></div></aside></div><div data-section="full" data-pos="boxinjector-d" data-template="hippo/components/ads/article-desktop.html" data-native="standard,gift" class=" ad-boxinjector-d-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="blah" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; display: grid; grid-template-areas: " a="a" b="b" grid-template-columns="grid-template-columns" fr="fr" px="px" margin-top="margin-top" em="em"><div class="l-articlecontainercontainer" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: none; width: 736px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1; align-self: start; grid-area: 1 / 1 / auto / span 1;"><section class="l-articlesection s-cms-content" itemprop="articleBody" id="article-section-1" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 64px;">The head lawyer representing Southern Pacific was a man named Roscoe Conkling. A leader of the Republican Party for more than a decade, Conkling had even been nominated to the Supreme Court twice. He begged off both times, the second time after the Senate had confirmed him. (He remains the last person to turn down a Supreme Court seat after winning confirmation). More than most lawyers, Conkling was seen by the justices as a peer.<div data-template="hippo/components/ads/article-mobile.html" data-native="standard,gift" data-pos="boxinjector-m" class=" ad-boxinjector-m-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-top: 0px;">It was a trust Conkling would betray. As he spoke before the Court on Southern Pacific’s behalf, Conkling recounted an astonishing tale. In the 1860s, when he was a young congressman, Conkling had served on the drafting committee that was responsible for writing the Fourteenth Amendment. Then the last member of the committee still living, Conkling told the justices that the drafters had changed the wording of the amendment, replacing “citizens” with “persons” in order to cover corporations too. Laws referring to “persons,” he said, have “by long and constant acceptance … been held to embrace artificial persons as well as natural persons.” Conkling buttressed his account with a surprising piece of evidence: a musty old journal he claimed was a previously unpublished record of the deliberations of the drafting committee.Years later, historians would discover that Conkling’s journal was real but his story was a fraud. The journal was in fact a record of the congressional committee’s deliberations but, upon close examination, it offered no evidence that the drafters intended to protect corporations. It showed, in fact, that the language of the equal-protection clause was never changed from “citizen” to “person.” So far as anyone can tell, the rights of corporations were not raised in the public debates over the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment or in any of the states’ ratifying conventions. And, prior to Conkling’s appearance on behalf of Southern Pacific, no member of the drafting committee had ever suggested that corporations were covered.<div data-template="hippo/components/ads/article-mobile.html" data-native="standard,gift" data-pos="boxinjector-m" class=" ad-boxinjector-m-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-top: 0px;">There’s reason to suspect Conkling’s deception was uncovered back in his time too. The justices held onto the case for three years without ever issuing a decision, until Southern Pacific unexpectedly settled the case. Then, shortly after, another case from Southern Pacific reached the Supreme Court, raising the exact same legal question. The company had the same team of lawyers, with the exception of Conkling. Tellingly, Southern Pacific’s lawyers omitted any mention of Conkling’s drafting history or his journal. Had those lawyers believed Conkling, it would have been malpractice to leave out his story.When the Court issued its decision on this second case, the justices expressly declined to decide if corporations were people. The dispute could be, and was, resolved on other grounds, prompting an angry rebuke from one justice, Stephen J. Field, who castigated his colleagues for failing to address “the important constitutional questions involved.” “At the present day, nearly all great enterprises are conducted by corporations,” he wrote, and they deserved to know if they had equal rights too.</div></div></section></div><aside class="l-rail l-rail--right l-rail--2" role="complementary" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: flex; flex-basis: 300px; flex-shrink: 0; min-width: 300px; grid-area: 1 / 2 / span 1 / auto; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; -webkit-box-pack: center; justify-content: center;"><div data-section="side" data-pos="native-rr" data-template="hippo/components/ads/rail.html" data-native="standard,gift" class=" ad-native-rr-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></aside></div><div data-section="full" data-pos="boxinjector-d" data-template="hippo/components/ads/article-desktop.html" data-native="standard,gift" class=" ad-boxinjector-d-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="blah" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; display: grid; grid-template-areas: " a="a" b="b" grid-template-columns="grid-template-columns" fr="fr" px="px" margin-top="margin-top" em="em"><div class="l-articlecontainercontainer" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: none; width: 736px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1; align-self: start; grid-area: 1 / 1 / auto / span 1;"><section class="l-articlesection s-cms-content" itemprop="articleBody" id="article-section-2" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 64px;"><div data-template="hippo/components/ads/article-mobile.html" data-native="standard,gift" data-pos="boxinjector-m" class=" ad-boxinjector-m-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-top: 0px;">Rumored to carry a gun with him at all times, the colorful Field was the only sitting justice ever arrested—and the charge was murder. He was innocent, but nonetheless guilty of serious ethical violations in the Southern Pacific cases, at least by modern standards: A confidant of Leland Stanford, Field had advised the company on which lawyers to hire for this very series of cases and thus should have recused himself from them. He refused to—and, even worse, while the first case was pending, covertly shared internal memoranda of the justices with Southern Pacific’s legal team.The rules of judicial ethics were not well developed in the Gilded Age, however, and the self-assured Field, who feared the forces of socialism, did not hesitate to weigh in. Taxing the property of railroads differently, he said, was like allowing deductions for property “owned by white men or by old men, and not deducted if owned by black men or young men.”So, with Field on the Court, still more twists were yet to come. The Supreme Court’s opinions are officially published in volumes edited by an administrator called the reporter of decisions. By tradition, the reporter writes up a summary of the Court’s opinion and includes it at the beginning of the opinion. The reporter in the 1880s was J.C. Bancroft Davis, whose wildly inaccurate summary of the Southern Pacific case said that the Court had ruled that “corporations are persons within … the Fourteenth Amendment.” Whether his summary was an error or something more nefarious—Davis had once been the president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company—will likely never be known.<div data-template="hippo/components/ads/article-mobile.html" data-native="standard,gift" data-pos="boxinjector-m" class=" ad-boxinjector-m-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-top: 0px;">Field nonetheless saw Davis’s erroneous summary as an opportunity. A few years later, in an opinion in an unrelated case, Field wrote that “corporations are persons within the meaning” of the Fourteenth Amendment. “It was so held in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad,” explained Field, who knew very well that the Court had done no such thing.His gambit worked. In the following years, the case would be cited over and over by courts across the nation, including the Supreme Court, for deciding that corporations had rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.Indeed, the faux precedent in the Southern Pacific case would go on to be used by a Supreme Court that in the early 20th century became famous for striking down numerous economic regulations, including federal child-labor laws, zoning laws, and wage-and-hour laws. Meanwhile, in cases like the notorious Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), those same justices refused to read the Constitution as protecting the rights of African Americans, the real intended beneficiaries of the Fourteenth Amendment. Between 1868, when the amendment was ratified, and 1912, the Supreme Court would rule on 28 cases involving the rights of African Americans and an astonishing 312 cases on the rights of corporations.The day back in 1882 when the Supreme Court first heard Roscoe Conkling’s argument, the New-York Daily Tribune featured a story on the case with a headline that would turn out to be prophetic: “Civil Rights of Corporations.” Indeed, in a feat of deceitful legal alchemy, Southern Pacific and its wily legal team had, with the help of an audacious Supreme Court justice, set up the Fourteenth Amendment to be more of a bulwark for the rights of businesses than the rights of minorities.</div></div></section></div></div>=evil b/c corps grab progressive wins, eg 14th, PACs, newspaper co's 1936 huey Long, 2c tax on lies (ad tax),scotus?  broadens press rightslewis powell and raplh nader 70's drugs (Va pharamcy ads with drug prices) = listener's right --> CUapple fended off fbi req on iphone based on corp personhood?webster hired by corps, won them rights?14th --> brown v bd, lgbtBank of US v devo
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_the_United_States_v.Deveaux">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_the_United_States_v.Deveaux</a>interview fundraising<a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-may-16-2018/">https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-may-16-2018/</a>   nom scotus 2x? last guy to turn down after confirm b/c making too much $ as lawyer for RR (he said explicitly)
adam winkler <a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-october-3-2018/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-october-3-2018/</a>28 14th AA mostly lost, v 311sprr 2nd 1corp pers case?!corps use personhood to override legislation
apple v fbi iphone
hwy thru ggl campus w/ compensation
but corps do not need ALL rights of ppl ([where to draw line? they have lots of lawyers ad lobbyists]
huey long LA put advert tax on newspapers (on lies) so newspapers sued (corps) pentagon paPERS,, V BALDWIN TO CrIT GOvT OFFICIALS
1st AMend expand NaDer consumer pharmacy advertize drug prices land mark case, consumer have 1st amebnd listener's right jiu jitsu to CU
4th, PAC etc co-opt left/progressive to expand corp power (nader Va case led to many uses to DISadvantage consumer?
1st Roman, had to re-org on ppl die; mining corps 1st mass pollutionroman cath church claims in 3rd C AD;  in MA used for non-biz eg NRA sierra club now...corps use personhood to override legislation
apple v fbi iphone
hwy thru ggl cam[us w/ compensation
but corps do not need ALL rights of ppl ([where to draw line? they have lots of lawyers ad lobbyists]
huey long LA put advert tax on newspapers (on lies) so newspapers sued (corps) pentagon paPERS,, V BALDWIN TO CrIT GOvT OFFICIALS
1st AMend expand NaDer consumer pharmacy advertize drug prices land mark case, consumer have 1st amebnd listener's right jiu jitsu to CU
Lewis pwl ~ nader; memo turned into const law; --> ballot measure;--> CUcorps seek new rights eg masterpiece bakeshop LTD
60's race cases clained const protection but lost.talk pm download<a href="https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sulr/vol30/iss4/2/">https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sulr/vol30/iss4/2/</a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/05/books/review/adam-winkler-we-the-corporations.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/05/books/review/adam-winkler-we-the-corporations.html</a>
z teachout
Around

300 B.C., the Romans invented a new way for a group of people to buy

property and enter into contracts. Instead of making deals with a

partner or set of partners, people could use a legal fiction that they

were an entity, a societas publicanorum. This new institution was owned and controlled by investors, but legally separate from them. The privilege to act as a societas publicanorum was rare, and required a decree by the Roman Senate or the emperor.Nearly

2,000 years later, versions of this legal innovation came to be used by

English businesses, churches, guilds and cities, and by the investors

behind the Virginia Company in colonial America. They were known as

corporations. Like the societas publicanorum, corporations

required a special charter from the king, giving its owners powerful but

limited rights: the right to collectively hold property, form contracts

and have access to the courts. Corporations were quasi-public, and each

corporate charter was unique, comprising highly detailed rules

including how much the corporation could charge for its products.

Eventually, corporate investors gained a special prize: the privilege of

limited liability, which allowed them to avoid personal legal

responsibility for the corporation’s actions.These

corporations did not merely come to America; according to Adam Winkler,

a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, arguably

they founded it. From 1607, when the Virginia Company established the

Jamestown colony, corporations have been inextricably embedded in

American life, Winkler maintains in his excellent and timely new book,

“We the Corporations.” The corporation of the British East India Company

inspired the colonists in a different way. The bailout of the company

by England — including the Tea Act of 1773, which lowered the price of

tea in the colonies while preserving the tax colonists paid on it —

infringed the colonial charters and led to the protests that were

instrumental in sparking the Revolutionary War.<figure id="media-100000005776989" class="media photo embedded layout-small-vertical media-100000005776989" data-media-action="modal" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/03/11/books/review/11teachout2/11teachout2-master180.jpg" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" role="group"><div class="image">

</div>

</div>

</figure>

Winkler’s

chief contribution is to show how corporations have been some of the

most important innovators in American law, shaping it for good and often

ill. Since the early days of the Republic, corporations have invested

substantial capital in some of the country’s most talented and

charismatic lawyers, pushed risky lawsuits and been on the “cutting

edge” of rights-making. They have not been passive recipients of legal

change but, rather, among its most significant architects.

Winkler

frames this history provocatively, as an ongoing “civil rights”

movement for corporations, which “have pursued a longstanding, strategic

effort to establish and expand” their rights in American constitutional

law. He proves his thesis by recounting two dozen critical moments when

corporations pushed the limits of existing law and mostly won new

rights. While the corporation of early America was an “artificial

person” — Blackstone’s term — for purposes of property ownership,

contracts and lawsuits alone, Winkler shows how “today corporations have

nearly all the same rights as individuals: freedom of speech, freedom

of the press, religious liberty, due process, equal protection, freedom

from unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to counsel, the right

against double jeopardy and the right to trial by jury.”

</div></aside></div></div><div class="story-body-supplemental"><div class="supplemental first" id="supplemental-1" data-between-flex-ads="true" data-pre-height="1636" data-max-items="2" data-remaining="691" data-minimum="400" data-last-item-height="891" data-flex-ad-adjacency="true" data-post-height="1636"><div class="supplemental-items" data-supplemental-order="0" data-no-ads="true"><aside class="buy-button-main marginalia related-combined-coverage-marginalia marginalia-item nocontent robots-nocontent"><div class="buy-button-group"><div>

We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights

Adam Winkler

</div>

</div>
</aside></div></div></div>Corporations

have rarely won rights by trumpeting their own importance, or openly

arguing for civil rights. Instead, over generations, they have succeeded

by claiming that corporate rights are necessary and useful tools for

vindicating the rights of others — of people. In the first major

corporate-rights case, in 1809, the issue was whether a bank had the

right to sue in federal court. Given the politics of the time, the bank

was likely to lose in state court. The problem was that the Constitution

gave access to federal court only to “citizens.” Instead of trying to

argue that a corporation is a person qua person, the bank’s lawyer

insisted that the rights of the owners — an association of people —

would be trampled on if the bank couldn’t be heard in federal court. The

Supreme Court acquiesced.One

hundred and seventy years later, in another bank case, the question was

similar but more momentous: Did Massachusetts have the right to limit

corporate spending around popular referendums? In this case, First

National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, the Supreme Court concluded that it

violated the First Amendment rights of the people of Massachusetts for

the state to discriminate among different sources of information. It was

not that the bank had a right to speak but that the public had a right

to hear the views of the bank, and the state had no right to outlaw

those communications merely because they came from a corporation. The

bank won the lawsuit, because it stood in for the rights of the people

who might want to hear its political views. Winkler contributes

fascinating original reporting to this case, uncovering notes between

justices and clerks that changed the outcome of the case, which in turn

laid the groundwork for the decision in Citizens United.
<a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?427014-8/we-corporations">https://www.c-span.org/video/?427014-8/we-corporations</a>
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/We-Corporations-American-Businesses-Rights/dp/0871407124">https://www.amazon.com/We-Corporations-American-Businesses-Rights/dp/0871407124</a>winkler uclaWe 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.
<a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/books/article/We-the-Corporations-by-Adam-Winkler-12789809.php">https://www.sfchronicle.com/books/article/We-the-Corporations-by-Adam-Winkler-12789809.php</a>
==
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