Corporations are Not People

Corporations are Not People PDF

Author: Jeffrey D. Clements

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1609941055

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This is the first practical guide for every citizen on the problem of corporate personhood and the tools we have to overturn it. Jeff Clements explains why the Citizen's United case is the final win in a campaign for corporate domination of the state that began in the 1970s under Richard Nixon. More than this, Clements shows how unfettered corporate rights will impact public health, energy policy, the environment, and the justice system. Where Thom Hartmann's Unequal Protection providesa much-needed detailed legal history of corporate personhood, Corporations Are Not People answers the reader's question: "What does Citizens United mean to me?" And, even more important, it provides a solution: a Constitutional amendment, included in the book, which would reverse Citizens United. The book's ultimate goal is to give every citizen the tools and talking points to overturn corporate personhood state by state, community by community with petitions, house party kits, draft letters, shareholder resolutions, and much more.

We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights

We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights PDF

Author: Adam Winkler

Publisher: Liveright Publishing

Published: 2018-02-27

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0871403846

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A landmark exposé and “deeply engaging legal history” of one of the most successful, yet least known, civil rights movements in American history (Washington Post). In a revelatory work praised as “excellent and timely” (New York Times Book Review, front page), Adam Winkler, author of Gunfight, once again makes sense of our fraught constitutional history in this incisive portrait of how American businesses seized political power, won “equal rights,” and transformed the Constitution to serve big business. Uncovering the deep roots of Citizens United, he repositions that controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision as the capstone of a centuries-old battle for corporate personhood. “Tackling a topic that ought to be at the heart of political debate” (Economist), Winkler surveys more than four hundred years of diverse cases—and the contributions of such legendary legal figures as Daniel Webster, Roger Taney, Lewis Powell, and even Thurgood Marshall—to reveal that “the history of corporate rights is replete with ironies” (Wall Street Journal). We the Corporations is an uncompromising work of history to be read for years to come.

Corporations Are People Too

Corporations Are People Too PDF

Author: Kent Greenfield

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2018-10-23

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0300240805

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Why we’re better off treating corporations as people under the law—and making them behave like citizens Are corporations people? The U.S. Supreme Court launched a heated debate when it ruled in Citizens United that corporations can claim the same free speech rights as humans. Should corporations be able to claim rights of free speech, religious conscience, and due process? Kent Greenfield provides an answer: Sometimes. With an analysis sure to challenge the assumptions of both progressives and conservatives, Greenfield explores corporations' claims to constitutional rights and the foundational conflicts about their obligations in society. He argues that a blanket opposition to corporate personhood is misguided, since it is consistent with both the purpose of corporations and the Constitution itself that corporations can claim rights at least some of the time. The problem with Citizens United is not that corporations have a right to speak, but for whom they speak. The solution is not to end corporate personhood but to require corporations to act more like citizens.

Unequal Protection

Unequal Protection PDF

Author: Thom Hartmann

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2010-06-07

Total Pages: 585

ISBN-13: 1605098396

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“This is a seminal work, a godsend really, a clear message to every citizen about the need to reform our country, laws, and companies.” —Paul Hawken, New York Times-bestselling author NEW EDITION, REVISED AND UPDATED Unequal taxes, unequal accountability for crime, unequal influence, unequal control of the media, unequal access to natural resources—corporations have gained these privileges and more by exploiting their legal status as persons. How did something so illogical and unjust become the law of the land? Americans have been struggling with the role of corporations since before the birth of the republic. As Thom Hartmann shows, the Boston Tea Party was actually a protest against the British East India Company—the first modern corporation. Unequal Protection tells the astonishing story of how, after decades of sensible limits on corporate power, an offhand, off-the-record comment by a Supreme Court justice led to the Fourteenth Amendment—originally passed to grant basic rights to freed slaves—becoming the justification for granting corporations the same rights as human beings. And Hartmann proposes specific legal remedies that will finally put an end to the bizarre farce of corporate personhood. This new edition has been thoroughly updated and features Hartmann’s analysis of two recent Supreme Court cases, including Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which tossed out corporate campaign finance limits. “If you wonder why and when giant corporations got the power to reign supreme over us, here’s the story.” —Jim Hightower, national radio commentator and New York Times-bestselling author “Tell[s] the grand story of corporate corruption and its consequences for society with the force and readability of a great novel. ”—David C. Korten, bestselling author of When Corporations Rule the World

Redirecting Human Rights

Redirecting Human Rights PDF

Author: A. Grear

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2010-04-09

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 0230274633

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Against the backdrop of globalization and mounting evidence of the corporate subversion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights paradigm, Anna Grear interrogates the complex tendencies within law that are implicated in the emergence of 'corporate humanity'. Grear presents a critical account of legal subjectivity, linking it with law's intimate relationship with liberal capitalism in order to suggest law's special receptivity to the corporate form. She argues that in the field of human rights law, particularly within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights paradigm, human embodied vulnerability should be understood as the foundation of human rights and as a key qualifying characteristic of the human rights subject. The need to redirect human rights in order to resist their colonization by powerful economic global actors could scarcely be more urgent.

Corporate Personhood

Corporate Personhood PDF

Author: Susanna Kim Ripken

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-08-08

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1108416527

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Explores the nature of corporate personhood and how it affects the rights, powers, and influence of corporations in society.

Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights

Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights PDF

Author: Jide James-Eluyode

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-11-27

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1498566650

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In Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights, Jide James-Eluyode provides a comprehensive analysis of critical human rights developments and topical issues and trends in corporate social responsibility practices. James-Eluyode examines how corporate entities fulfill their responsibility to respect human rights in general and indigenous peoples’ rights in particular. Given the momentous impact of corporate projects and recent developments in the area of international human rights, James-Eluyode contends that the establishment of a universally-binding, corporate code of conduct is inescapable, and concludes that respect for human rights by corporations is not simply a discretionary moral or binding legal matter but a bottom-line issue.

The Corporation

The Corporation PDF

Author: Joel Bakan

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1439134944

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The inspiration for the film that won the 2004 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary, The Corporation contends that the corporation is created by law to function much like a psychopathic personality, whose destructive behavior, if unchecked, leads to scandal and ruin. Over the last 150 years the corporation has risen from relative obscurity to become the world’s dominant economic institution. Eminent Canadian law professor and legal theorist Joel Bakan contends that today's corporation is a pathological institution, a dangerous possessor of the great power it wields over people and societies. In this revolutionary assessment of the history, character, and globalization of the modern business corporation, Bakan backs his premise with the following observations: -The corporation’s legally defined mandate is to pursue relentlessly and without exception its own economic self-interest, regardless of the harmful consequences it might cause to others. -The corporation’s unbridled self-interest victimizes individuals, society, and, when it goes awry, even shareholders and can cause corporations to self-destruct, as recent Wall Street scandals reveal. -Governments have freed the corporation, despite its flawed character, from legal constraints through deregulation and granted it ever greater authority over society through privatization. But Bakan believes change is possible and he outlines a far-reaching program of achievable reforms through legal regulation and democratic control. Featuring in-depth interviews with such wide-ranging figures as Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, business guru Peter Drucker, and cultural critic Noam Chomsky, The Corporation is an extraordinary work that will educate and enlighten students, CEOs, whistle-blowers, power brokers, pawns, pundits, and politicians alike.