Are corporations people? The U.S. Supreme Court says they are, at least for some purposes. NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports that in the past four years, the high court has dramatically expanded corporate rights. It ruled that corporations have the right to spend money in candidate elections, and that some for-profit corporations may, on religious grounds, refuse to comply with a federal mandate to cover birth control in their employee health plans.
Some have noted that if we take the idea of corporate personhood literally, some corporate “citizens” display sociopathic tendencies. On Monday’s AU, In the first in a four-part series we’ll discuss the history of corporations and how they’ve reached the status they enjoy today. Our guests will include Adrian Wooldridge, Management Editor of The Economist and co-author of “The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea.” William Shughart, J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice in the USU Huntsman School of Business and Research Director and Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland. We’ll look at the the rise of corporations in the U.S. through the court rulings and economic climate of the times.
Later in this series we will look at the arguments for and against corporate personhood, the impact of the U. S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and subsequent Move To Amend, which seeks to overturn that ruling. We’ll also talk about Corporate Social Responsibility, Benefit Corporations and Conscious Capitalism.
