WE THE CORPORATIONS: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights

WE THE CORPORATIONS, by Adam Winkler, traces the long, secret, even shocking history of one of America’s the most successful yet least known civil rights movements: the struggle for corporate rights. The first Supreme Court case extending constitutional protections to business corporations was decided in 1809, more than a half-century before the first comparable cases for racial minorities or women. Although corporations never marched on Washington, they relentlessly fought for their rights through legal victories in the Supreme Court—which, rather than serve as a bulwark for minority rights, has more often used its powers to impede the regulation of big business.