We The Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights

FEATURING ADAM WINKLER – How do US corporations claim so many of the same rights that humans have, such as the right to free speech? After all, we human beings are tangible persons with cognitive abilities. But corporations are abstract notions, they are institutions created for practical reasons. When the rights of corporations are given the same weight as the rights of humans, how does this impact real people?

The fight to give corporations many of the same rights as human beings has a long history in the US and involves the end of slavery, the civil rights movement, and numerous Supreme Court decisions in landmark cases. In his latest book UCLA law professor Adam Winkler tells the story of how corporations won their “civil rights.”

Adam Winkler, Professor of Law at UCLA whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Review of Books, and more. He is the author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America and his newest book is ‘We The Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights.’

**This segment was originally broadcast on March 8, 2018.