Corporations Are People Too (And They Should Act Like It)

297 Pages·2018·1.711 MB·English

by  Kent Greenfield

Corporations Are People Too
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Corporations
Are People Too
(And They Should Act Like It)
Kent Greenfield
New Haven & London
Published with assistance from the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund.
Copyright © 2018 by Kent Greenfield.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustra-
tions, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108
of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press),
without written permission from the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational,
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Set in Janson Roman type by Integrated Publishing Solutions,
Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937838
ISBN 978-0-300-21147-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Liam, Ruby, and Henry,
the best people I know
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Contents
Introduction ix
One
In Defense of Corporate Persons 1
Two
Corporations and the “Damn Public” 29
Three
Should Corporations Have Rights? 59
Four
Corporations and Fundamental Rights, Equality,
and Religion 82
Five
Corporations and Speech Theory 101
Contents
Six
Speech and Corporate Purpose 134
Seven
More Personhood, Please 171
Eight
Six Bad Arguments for Shareholder Primacy 186
Nine
The Promise of Corporate Personhood 208
Postscript
Making Corporations Citizens 224
Notes 227
Acknowledgments 267
Index 271
viii
Introduction
Americans have an odd relationship with corporations. We love
our Apple iPads, Sony big-screen televisions, and Ford F150s. We
obsess about where to get the best deals on Black Friday and ea-
gerly await the commercials during halftime at the Super Bowl.
We attend baseball games at AT&T Park and football games at
MetLife Stadium. We lionize successful business people such as
Douglas Branson who captivate us with their extravagant lifestyles
and idiosyncratic personalities. We wear our favorite brands on our
sleeves—not to mention our caps, shirts, purses, and jeans—as if to
borrow the branded image of our favorite corporations as our own.
In effect, we pay corporations to advertise for them; clothing with
a corporate logo emblazoned on it is often more expensive than a
plain version. My local hipster coffee shop has a huge Mobil sign
adorning an inside wall, intended as art.
But in our popular imagination corporations and their leaders
are also among our most ubiquitous villains. Rapacious business-
man Henry Potter bedevils sweet George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful