Adam Winkler
Adam Winkler
Adam Winkler is the Connell Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law. He is the author of We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights and Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. His work has been cited in judicial opinions, including in Supreme Court cases pertaining to the First and Second Amendments.
"[I]n Citizens United... justices ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend their money to influence elections. The decision was wildly unpopular, with poles showing an overwhelming majority of both Democrats and Republicans opposed. ...As of 2016, sixteen states and hundreds of municipalities had endorsed a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United..."
"Corporations did not win their constitutional rights in quite the same way as women, racial minorities, or gays and lesbians... [who] pursued their claims in both courts of law and the court of public opinion. To achieve lasting constitutional change... required more... Lawsuits were backed up by broad-based, popular social movements that demanded rights for those who had been denied the original premise of We the People."
"For most of American history, the court has been decidedly favorable to business, regardless of whether the majority of justices was liberal or conservative."
"Founding Fathers of the United States"
"Many critics of Citizens United believe that corporations have the same rights as individuals because the Supreme Court defines them as people. The proposed constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United is based on this idea... Yet corporate personhood has played only a secondary role in the corporate rights movement. ...[J]ustices have more often relied upon a very different conception... an association capable of asserting the rights of its members. This... has paved the way for the steady expansion of corporate rights. Indeed, corporate personhood has traditionally—and surprisingly—been used to justify limits on the rights of corporations."
"In December 1882, ... appeared before the justices of the Supreme Court... to argue that corporations like his client, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, were entitled to equal rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Although that provision of the Constitution said that no state shall "deprive any person... " or "deny to any person..." Conkling insisted the... drafters intended to cover business corporations too. ...The Fourteenth Amendment had been adopted after the Civil War to guarantee the rights of freed slaves, not to protect corporations. Conkling, however, had unusual credibility... If anyone could testify to the intent of the... drafters, it was Conkling, who was one himself. ...Conkling produced a musty, never-before-published journal that purported to detail his committees deliberations. ...There was just one small problem with Conklings account of the drafting... it was not true."
