Why Corporations Always Win At The Supreme Court - ft. Adam Winkler

Episode Summary

Many people think corporate personhood is the problem behind many issues in law and politics. This guest argues it might actually be the answer.

Episode Notes

Corporations are people in the eyes of the law. But how did that happen, and why does it hand them rights you don't have? 

UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, author of "We the Corporations", traces a 200-year campaign by business to win the constitutional rights of human beings. Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales press him on what Zingales calls an incredible trick. Corporations insist they're separate from their owners when that shields owners from blame, then argue they're like people when they want to spend on elections or dodge a rule. 

Winkler traces how the Fourteenth Amendment, written after the Civil War to protect the newly freed, became a tool for railroads and banks instead. He even describes a lawyer who, by his account, lied to the Supreme Court, producing a journal he claimed proved the amendment was meant for corporations. 

Zingales pushes on what comes next: could AI itself qualify for legal personhood, and would that shield big tech from blame? When we ask Winkler for a shred of hope that the long arc doesn't simply keep favoring business, the answer is far shorter and blunter than expected.