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Sign up todayWe the Corporations
How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights
Narrator
William Hughes
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Length
14 hours 31 minutes
Language
English
In this groundbreaking portrait of corporate seizure of political power, We the Corporations reveals how American businesses won equal rights and transformed the Constitution to serve the ends of capital.
Corporations—like minorities and women—have had a civil rights movement of their own and now possess nearly all the same rights as ordinary people. Uncovering the deep historical roots of Citizens United, Adam Winkler shows how that controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision was the capstone of a two-hundred-year battle over corporate personhood and constitutional protections for business.
Bringing to resounding life the legendary lawyers and justices involved in the corporate rights movement—among them Daniel Webster, Roger Taney, Lewis Powell, and even Thurgood Marshall—Winkler’s tour de force exposes how the nation’s most powerful corporations gained our most fundamental rights and turned the Constitution into a bulwark against the regulation of big business.
Adam Winkler is the author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America and a professor of constitutional law at the University of California–Los Angeles. He has been featured on CNN and in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New Republic. A columnist for the Daily Beast, he lives in Los Angeles.
William Hughes is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. A professor of political science at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon, he received his doctorate in American politics from the University of California at Davis. He has done voice-over work for radio and film and is also an accomplished jazz guitarist.
Reviews
“Maddening for those who care about matters constitutional and an important document in the ongoing struggle to undo Citizens United.”
“Provides a masterful retrospective map at a time when people are feeling bewildered and enraged by growing corporate power.”
“Winkler’s deeply engaging legal history, authoritative but accessible to non-lawyers, takes readers inside courtrooms, judges’ chambers, and corporate offices…[A] meticulous, educational and thoroughly enjoyable retelling of our nation’s past.”
"[An] elegant stitching together of 400 years of diverse cases, allowing us to feel the sweep and flow of history and the constantly shifting legal approaches to understanding this unusual entity…[the] ‘artificial person.’”
“A forceful and highly readable account of what [Winkler] convincingly describes as a ‘long, and long overlooked, corporate rights movement.’”
“He writes with verve and humor…A tour de force of legal history, deftly told, We the Corporations encourages readers to see things from different angles and provides a kind of road map to help understand some of the big questions likely to face the courts in coming years.”
“Winkler’s research is impressively thorough and wide-ranging…[He] employs an evocative, fast-paced storytelling style, making for an entertaining and enlightening book.”
“This timely, exciting book…[is] a field guide to the legal issues and an overview of a long-term corporate civil rights movement…Along the way, he presents a wide range of vividly drawn historical figures, bringing their philosophies, tactics, debates, and shenanigans to life while allowing readers to assess the ethics and implications of their work.”
“William Hughes narrates in a serious tone with emphatic deliberation that effectively conveys the sometimes-complex legal discussions at the heart of Winkler’s prose…Hughes proves to be engaging as he continually adjusts his voice to best deliver the vast number of details and arguments coming at the listener.”
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