Adam Winkler (1) (1967–)

The cry of "Corporations are not people!" after 'Citizens United' was not quite right. The US Supreme Court has tended to restrict corporate rights when it has treated corporations as persons, artificial legal persons; and to grant them rights when it has treated them as bearers of the rights of the underlying owners and members using the corporate form to associate together.

This is an interesting account of cases concerning the rights of corporations, non-profit and business both, that demonstrates how inconsistently the law has treated them. Are corporations artificial legal persons separate from their members or owners, such as when their members are not held liable for the debts of the corporation; or are they instead just a legal form for associations of individuals, such as when SCOTUS in 'Citizens United' ruled that corporate campaign funding and publications were the expression of a corporation's members considered as associated natural persons? The pendulum has swung back and forth, and corporations' various claims to possess rights have been chopped about to grant them some but not others. The pendulum has now swung far in favour of the corporations, with Justice Alito writing in the 'Hobby Lobby' decision that when corporate rights are granted, it is in order to protect the rights of the underlying human beings. The cases have sometimes involved deception and misunderstanding on the part of judges and lawyers: a key case was intentionally wrongly reported by the compiler of SCOTUS' decisions to pretend the court had ruled that 'persons' in the Constitution includes corporations, a report later relied on in other cases. This inconsistency has continued all the way down through 'Citizens United', which was decided in the corporations' favour just seven years after the Court had ruled the other way in 'McConnell v FEC'.

I don't, however, think the corporate rights issue was the most damaging aspect of the decision: corporations could already use nominally separate advocacy groups to spend without limit on independent publications, only without naming candidates within 60 days of an election. The worst was the Court's absurdly naive restriction of the concept of corruption to quid pro quo bribes. Politicians' pursuit of campaign spending funds, even monies spent by independent organisations and PACs, is inherently corrupting of their role in a democracy. They ought to be responsive to the views of their constituents and ideas of the good of their country, not to donors and big spenders: Congressional representatives spend half their working time on fund-raising! Campaign spending should be limited for candidates, individuals and corporations all, so that candidates get back to focussing on responding to their fellow citizens rather than on getting bankrolled. And for-profit corporations should be limited most of all because they are not simply associations of well-meaning citizens, but organisations with their own money-making purpose, which renders all their political interventions suspect.… (plus d'informations)

The Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) centers this book on the history and future of gun control in the United States. Guns played a prominent role in the founding of the nation, but ideas about guns, who should have access to guns, and especially the meaning of the Second Amendment has changed over time. The book explores these changes and the way perspectives on guns have hardened over time. The NRA, for example, had for most of its existence supported gun control. Gun control advocates hurt their cause by denying the importance of gun ownership throughout the nation's history. The decision in the Heller case left both gun control advocates and opponents surprised and concerned. Winkler also discusses what the Heller decision means for the future of gun control.… (plus d'informations)