We the Corporations

by Adam Winkler

  8. On Keppler’s cartoon, see Donald Dewey, The Art of Ill Will: The Story of American Political Cartoons (2008), 229.

  9. On the “industrial revolution” in electoral politics and candidates’ increasing need for new sources of financing, see Mark Wahlgren Summer, “ ‘To Make the Wheels Revolve We Must Have Grease’: Barrel Politics in the Gilded Age,” in Money and Politics, ed. Paula Baker (2002), 49. On the changes in the electoral process, see Adam Winkler, “Voters’ Rights and Parties’ Wrongs: Early Political Party Regulation in the State Courts, 1886–1915,” 100 Columbia Law Review 873 (2000).

  10. On Hanna, see Herbert David Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna: His Life and Work (1912); William T. Horner, Ohio’s Kingmaker: Mark Hanna, Man and Myth (2010).

  11. On Bryan, see Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (2006).

  12. See Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna: His Life and Work, 212–213; Thomas J. Baldino and Kyle L. Kreider, U.S. Election Campaigns: A Documentary and Reference Guide (2011), 3.

  13. See Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna: His Life and Work, 146; Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations, ed. Hugh Rawson and Margaret Miner (2006), 526.

  14. See Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna: His Life and Work, 219.

  15. On Hanna’s solicitations of businessmen, see ibid., 326; Steven G. Koven, Responsible Governance: A Case Study Approach (2008), 46; Baldino and Kreider, U.S. Election Campaigns, 5; Bradley A. Smith, Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform (2001), 22.

  16. See Smith, Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform, 22.

  17. On New York Life’s dealings with the Texas inquiry, see “N.Y. Life Men Made Oath in Flat Conflict,” New York World, September 28, 1905, 1; “Sworn Statement of N.Y. Life Officials That Disagree,” New York World, September 28, 1905, 1.

  18. On the rumors of corporate contributions, see Perry Belmont, “Publicity of Election Expenditures,” 180 North American Review 166 (1905); George Thayer, Who Shakes the Money Tree? American Campaign Finance Practices From 1789 to the Present (1973), 49–50; Keller, The Life Insurance Enterprise, 228. Parker’s charges were recounted in “Parker Barred the Trusts from Democratic Fund,” New York Times, November 6, 1904, A1.

  19. On Frick’s reaction to Roosevelt, see Sean Dennis Cashman, America Ascendant: From Theodore Roosevelt to FDR in the Century of American Power, 1901–1945 (1998), 15.

  20. See Tom Lansford, Theodore Roosevelt in Perspective (2005), 73; “Roosevelt Speaks; Cortelyou Charges Called Monstrous,” New York Times, November 5, 1904, A1.

  21. See Glad, Charles Evans Hughes and the Illusions of Innocence, 62.

  22. On the press reaction to Perkins’s revelations, see The Autobiographical Notes of Charles Evans Hughes, ed. David J. Danelski and Joseph S. Tulchin, 125–126.

  23. On insurance company contributions, see Testimony Taken Before the Joint Committee of the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York to Investigate and Examine into the Business and Affairs of Life Insurance Companies Doing Business in the State of New York (1905), 1:751–753; State of New York, Report of the Joint Committee of the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York Appointed to Investigate the Affairs of Life Insurance Companies, Assembly Document Number 41 (1906), 106; Winkler, Other People’s Money, 892–893; James K. Pollock Jr., Party Campaign Funds (1926), 128.

  24. See Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1991 ed.), 68.

  25. See Keller, The Life Insurance Enterprise, ix; “The Life Insurance Upheaval,” Collier’s, October 7, 1905, 11; Melvin Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (2009), 158.

  26. See “Light on a Missionary Enterprise,” Collier’s, October 28, 1905, 13; James F. Simon, FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: The President, The Supreme Court, and the Epic Battle over the New Deal (2012), 30–31.

  27. See Winkler, Other People’s Money, 901–905.

  28. See Alfred D. Chandler Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977), 15–49, 287–289; James C. Bonbright and Gardiner Means, The Holding Company: Its Public Significance and Its Regulation (1932), 56; Charles S. Tippetts and Shaw Livermore, Business Organization and Control: Corporations and Trusts in the United States (1932), 229; Winkler, Other People’s Money, 906–909. Hughes’s conclusion was stated in State of New York, Report of the Joint Committee of the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York Appointed to Investigate the Affairs of Life Insurance Companies, Assembly Document No. 41 (1906), 6.

  29. See Charles J. Bullock, “Life Insurance and Speculation,” 97 Atlantic Monthly 629, 639 (1906).

  30. Burton J. Hendrick, “Governor Hughes,” McClure’s 30 (1908): 521, 534.

  31. See James W. Breen, “How the Banks Filled Hanna’s War Chest,” New York Herald, April 12, 1906; Winkler, Other People’s Money, 896–898; F. P. Dunne, “Mr. Dooley on the Life Insurance Investigation,” Collier’s, November 4, 1905, 12.

  32. See Winkler, Other People’s Money, 898–899.

  33. See Testimony Taken Before the Joint Committee of the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York to Investigate and Examine into the Business and Affairs of Life Insurance Companies Doing Business in the State of New York (1905), 1:761; State of New York, Report of the Joint Committee of the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York Appointed to Investigate the Affairs of Life Insurance Companies, Assembly Document No. 41 (1906), 59; Winkler, Other People’s Money, 899.

  34. See Winkler, Other People’s Money, 894–895.

  35. See Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, 164.

  36. See “Probing the Insurance Companies,” New York Times, October 1, 1905, 4.

  37. On Brandeis generally, see Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life; Jeffrey Rosen, Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet (2016); Alpheus Thomas Mason, Brandeis: A Free Man’s Life (1946); Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis: Justice for the People (1984).

  38. Brandeis biographer Melvin Urofsky pinpoints the insurance scandal as Brandeis’s initial articulation of the “curse of bigness” and “other people’s money” corruption ideas. See Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, 157–162. For Brandeis’s own scholarship, see Samuel Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, “The Law of Ponds,” 3 Harvard Law Review 1 (1889); Samuel Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, “The Right to Privacy,” 4 Harvard Law Review 193 (1890). On the influence of the privacy article, see Melville B. Nimmer, “The Right of Publicity,” 19 Law and Contemporary Problems 203 (1954).

  39. See Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, 157.

  40. Brandeis’s speech is available at https://archive.org/stream/lifeinsuranceabu00branrich#page/n1/mode/2up and is discussed in detail in Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, 160 et seq. On how Brandeis’s role as counsel to the New England Policy-Holders Committee reflected his sometimes problematic “independence” from his clients, see Clyde Spillenger, “Elusive Advocate: Reconsidering Brandeis as People’s Lawyer,” 105 Yale Law Journal 1445 (1996).

  41. See Thomas K. McCraw, Prophets of Regulation (1984), 80 et seq.; Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, 161, 300–326.

  42. See Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, 308–309. On Brandeis as intellectual heir to Jefferson’s populism, see Rosen, Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet.

  43. Quoted in Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, 170.

  44. Louis K. Liggett Company v. Lee, 288 U.S. 517 (1933) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).

  45. See Louis D. Brandeis, Other People’s Money: And How the Bankers Use It (1914).

  46. On Cabot and the Muscovy Company, see Richard Biddle, A Memoir of Sebastian Cabot: With A Review of the History of Maritime Discovery (1831); J. T. Kotilaine, Russia’s Foreign Trade and Economic Expansion in the Seventeenth Century (2005), 15; Anon., The Origin and Early History of the Russia or Muscovy Company (1830); John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea (2003), 8; T. S. Willan, The Early History of the Russia Company, 1553–1603 (1956). On Columbus’s financing, see D. B. Quinn, “The
Italian Renaissance and Columbus,” 6 Renaissance Studies 359 (1992). On Cabot’s Italian inspiration, see C. E. Walker, “The History of the Joint Stock Company,” 6 Accounting Review 97 (1931). On early European stockholding, see Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce (1982), 323 et seq. The firm’s multiple reorganizations have led to some disagreement about when it ceased to operate.

  47. See William G. Roy, Socializing Capital: The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporation in America (1997), xiii, 197; Charles R. Geisst, Wall Street: A History (1997), 105.

  48. See State of New York, Report of the Joint Committee of the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York Appointed to Investigate the Affairs of Life Insurance Companies, Assembly Document Number 41 (1906), 393.

  49. “President in Conference over Campaign Funds,” New York World, September 21, 1905, 1; “Probing the Insurance Companies,” New York Times, October 1, 1905, 4; Theodore Roosevelt, State of the Union Message, December 5, 1905, available at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29546.

  50. See Winkler, Other People’s Money, 922.

  51. On Greenberg’s dispute with the Western Turf Association, see “Jury Verdict for Greenberg,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 23, 1900, 9; “Corrigan Has a Black List for Enemies,” San Francisco Call, March 21, 1900, 12; Greenberg v. Western Turf Association, 73 P. 1050 (Cal. 1903); Bennett Liebman, “The Supreme Court and Exclusions by Racetracks,” 17 Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal 421, 426–430 (2010); Transcript of Record, Western Turf Association v. Greenberg, 204 U.S. 359 (1907). On Tanforan, see “Tanforan Park,” San Francisco Call, December 17, 1899, 45; Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2001), 113 et seq.

  52. See Western Turf Association v. Greenberg, 204 U.S. 359 (1907).

  53. For an excellent account of the Berea College case, see David E. Bernstein, “Plessy versus Lochner: The Berea College Case,” 25 Journal of Supreme Court History 93 (2000). See also Berea College v. Commonwealth, 94 S.W. 623 (1906).

  54. See Bernstein, “Plessy versus Lochner,” 99–101.

  55. See Berea College v. Kentucky, 211 U.S. 45 (1908).

  56. See Amy Mittelman, Brewing Battles: A History of American Beer (2008), 28–62.

  57. Ibid., 38–39; Lisa M. F. Anderson, The Politics of Prohibition: American Governance and the Prohibition Party, 1869–1933 (2013); Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (2010).

  58. See Okrent, Last Call, 58; Mittelman, Brewing Battles, 61.

  59. See People v. Gansley, 158 N.W. 195 (Mich. 1916).

  60. See “John Stone,” Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society, available at http://www.micourthistory.org/justices/john-stone/.

  61. See Okrent, Last Call, 58; Mittelman, Brewing Battles, 61; “Many Brewers Indicted by Grand Jury,” Reading Eagle, March 3, 1916, 29; United States v. United States Brewers Association, 239 F. 163 (W.D. Pa. 1916).

  62. See United States v. American Tobacco, 221 U.S. 106 (1911); Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U.S. 1 (1911). For examples of Roosevelt biographies that skip over the campaign finance scandal, see Lewis L. Gould, Theodore Roosevelt (2012); Louis Auchincloss, Theodore Roosevelt (2002). An exception is Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (2010).

  63. See Winkler, Other People’s Money, 914–915; Garrity, Right-Hand Man, 190–191.

  64. See New York ex rel. Perkins v. Moss, 80 N.E. 383 (N.Y. 1907).

  65. See Garrity, Right-Hand Man, 253–275.

  CHAPTER 7: DISCRETE AND INSULAR CORPORATIONS

  1. The number of cases decided and majority opinions written was compiled from the following sources: Albert P. Blaustein and Roy M. Mersky, The First One Hundred Justices: Statistical Studies on the Supreme Court of the United States 89 (1978); Lee Epstein et al., The Supreme Court Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments 88–90 (5th ed., 2012); Journal of the Supreme Court of the United States, October Terms 2010–2014, available at http://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/journal.aspx. For the cases listed by name, see Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954); Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964); Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2071 (2015).

  2. On Stone, see Alpheus Thomas Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law (1968); Samuel J. Konefsky, Chief Justice Stone and the Supreme Court (1946); John W. Johnson, “Harlan Fiske Stone,” in The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Melvin Urofsky (1994), 425. On the opposition in the Senate, see Joseph Pratt Harris, The Advice and Consent of the Senate: A Study of the Confirmation of Appointments by the United States Senate (1953), 118.

  3. See United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152–153 n. 4 (1938).

  4. On the Sedition and Espionage Acts and the persecution of marginalized people, see Ernest Freeberg, Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent (2008). On Stone and Columbia, see Robert McCaughey, Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University (2003), 215; Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law, 518.

  5. On Long, see Richard White, Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long (2006).

  6. On Long’s battle with the newspapers, see Richard C. Cortner, The Kingfish and the Constitution: Huey Long, the First Amendment, and the Emergence of Modern Press Freedom in America (1996). See also Samuel R. Olken, “The Business of Expression: Economic Liberty, Political Factions and the Forgotten First Amendment Legacy of Justice George Sutherland,” 10 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 249 (2001–2002).

  7. See Cortner, The Kingfish and the Constitution, 24–32.

  8. Ibid., 26–31, 47–50.

  9. Ibid., 35, 96–97.

  10. Ibid., 76, 95; Olken, “The Business of Expression,” 284.

  11. See Cortner, The Kingfish and the Constitution, 79–82; Olken, “The Business of Expression,” 286.

  12. On the pre–World War I free speech debates, see David M. Rabban, Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years (1997).

  13. See Freeberg, Democracy’s Prisoner, 4.

  14. See Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act to the War on Terrorism (2004), 135 et seq.; “Sedition Act of 1918,” in The United States in the First World War: An Encyclopedia, ed. Anne Cipriano Venzon (2013), 536.

  15. On Holmes’s evolution, see Thomas Healy, The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind—and Changed the History of Free Speech in America (2013).

  16. See Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 624–631 (1919) (Holmes, J., dissenting). On the origins and flaws of the marketplace metaphor, see Joseph Blocher, “Institutions in the Marketplace of Ideas,” 57 Duke Law Journal 821 (2008).

  17. See Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925).

  18. See Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931); Fred W. Friendly, Minnesota Rag (2013).

  19. Cortner, The Kingfish and the Constitution, 92.

  20. On Deutsch and Phelps, see ibid., 21, 31, 99–100; S. L. Alexander et al., The Times-Picayune in a Changing Media World (2014), 33; E. P. Deutsch, “A Louisiana Lawyer,” New York Times, January 18, 1980, B5.

  21. See Cortner, The Kingfish and the Constitution, 114.

  22. Ibid., 33–34, 55.

  23. On Porterie, see Harnett T. Kane, Huey Long’s Louisiana Hayride (1971), 249; E. Phelps Gay, “History of the Louisiana Bar: Kingfish’s Legacy?,” 60 Louisiana Bar Journal 466, 469 (2013).

  24. On Porterie and Rivet’s mistakes, see Cortner, The Kingfish and the Constitution, 137, 161.

  25. See “Henry Ford Explains Why He Gives Away $10,000,000,” New York Times, January 11, 1914; M. Todd Henderson, “The Story of Dodge v. Ford Motor Company: Everything Old is New Again,” in Corporate Law Stories, ed. J. Mark Ramseyer (2009), 37.

  26. See Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, 170 N.W. 668 (Mich. 1919); Kent Greenfield, “Corporate Law’s Original Sin,” Washington Monthly (2015), available at http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/janfeb-2015/sidebar-corporate-laws-original-sin/.

  27. Greenfield, “Corporate Law’s Original Sin.”

  2
8. See Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, 170 N.W. 668 (Mich. 1919).

  29. See Milton Friedman, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970.

  30. On the shareholder wealth maximization norm, see Stephen M. Bainbridge, “In Defense of the Shareholder Wealth Maximization Norm,” 50 Washington & Lee Law Review 1423 (1993). On its flaws, see Lynn Stout, The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public (2012); Joel Bakan, The Corporation (2005).

  31. See Cortner, The Kingfish and the Constitution, 139.

  32. See ibid.

  33. Ibid., 91.

  34. See Olken, “The Business of Expression,” 292 n. 215.

  35. See G. Edward White, The Constitution and the New Deal (2002), 81, 296–297.

  36. On Cardozo, see Richard Polenberg, The World of Benjamin Cardozo: Personal Values and the Judicial Process (1999).

  37. See Olken, “The Business of Expression,” 293–307.

  38. Ibid., 298–299; Grosjen v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233 (1936).

  39. On the freedom of the press, see Garrett Epps, The First Amendment: Freedom of the Press: Its Constitutional History and the Contemporary Debate (2008); A. J. Liebling, “Do You Belong In Journalism?,” New Yorker, May 14, 1960, 105. See also New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964); New York Times v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).

  CHAPTER 8: CORPORATIONS, RACE, AND CIVIL RIGHTS

  1. On the NAACP, see Patricia Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (2009); Mark Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936–1961 (1994). See also Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963.

  2. On Patterson, see Gene L. Howard, Patterson for Alabama: The Life and Career of John Patterson (2008).

  3. Details of the NAACP litigation can be found in Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law, 283 et seq.; John D. Inazu, Liberty’s Refuge (2012), 77 et seq. See also Branch, Parting the Waters.