Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights

Rating:
Summary: Taking Democracy Back
Review: "Unequal Protection" begins by citing the depredations of the trans-national corporation, subsidized and supported by the British Monarchy, known as the East India Company, as the primary reason for the American War of Independence. The Boston Tea Party was intended to prevent East India tea from being sold at subsidized low prices in unfair, monopolistic, competition with Yankee traders.

Once independence was won, our founding fathers, most notably Jefferson and Madison, joined by Adams and Hamilton, set about creating a set of laws, our Constitution, that would make certain that corporations would never again gain such power over the lives of people.

The book describes the accidents and collusions of history that have resulted in the establishment of "personhood" for corporations, so they might enjoy the Constitutional protections intended for individuals, while wielding the power of great wealth and almost unlimited resources.

The author, Thom Hartman, walks the reader through history with a lively, penetrating exposition of the thinking that went into the attempt to control corporate power and subsequent machinations that took control from the hands of government -- leaving giant transnational corporations in a position to make life and death decisions for we, the people and the planet.

Once you have read this book, you will realize why it is that we must start by re-establishing the fundamental intentions of our Constitution in order to take our democracy back.

-- Reviewed by Woody Powell ...

Rating:
Summary: The end of the American dream?
Review: America's Founding Fathers and early Presidents warned that the success of the new republic depended on keeping corporations in check (p. 5). In fact, Thomas Jefferson believed that big government, organized religion, and commercial monopolies (the "pseudo aristoi") posed the biggest threats to human rights (pp. 69-70). In this sobering history of corporate America, Thom Hartmann demonstrates rather convincingly that inequalities of corporate regulation, taxes, responsibility for crime, privacy, wealth, trade, influence and access to natural resources are depriving us of "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," the very rights that constitute the heart and soul of the American dream.

Hartmann draws parallels between the Boston Tea Party in 1773 and the more recent WTO protests. While most of us were taught that the colonists were upset about "taxation without representation," Hartmann asserts that the colonists were, in fact, protesting "government sponsorship of one corporation over all competitors, plain and simple" (p. 60). He also examines how corporations have used the Fourteenth Amendment--originally enacted to grant rights to freed slaves--to further their own economic interests to the detriment of our individual interests guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. Because of the notion that corporations have the same rights as persons, Hartmann asserts, the world is becoming more unequal everyday (p. 154). Painting a devastating picture of the state of our union, for the most part, Hartmann succeeds in ending his book with a rallying call for "we, the people," to reclaim our lives from corporate America, and to begin living the American dream once again, rather than the corporate dream that has been imposed upon us.

Critical and well-researched, this is a book that will no doubt be labeled as "radical" by corporate America, and like David Korten's WHEN CORPORATIONS RULE THE WORLD (1995) and the more recent CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY (1997), Thom Hartmann's UNEQUAL PROTECTION is a book corporate America is hoping you won't read.

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: A call to reclaim democracy
Review: As a result of a legal error in 1886 in the Santa Clara vs Southern Pacific Railroad case in the U.S, corporations were mistakenly granted legal 'personhood' under the Fourteenth amendment. Hartmann charts the results of this legal error and traces the rise of corporate power and its detrimental effects on human rights, the environment and democracy itself. Showing how corporations, some now larger (in dollar terms) than some countries, now have greater rights than the humans who created them, and how through political lobbying, corporate campaign funding and a corporate controlled media, this has ...... the democratic ideals envisaged by Founding Fathers of the US Constitution.

A fascinating and disturbing history of how the very ideals of freedom, human rights for all and 'all are created equal' have been consistently and routinely eroded by the effects of unchecked capitalism. In the wake of Enron, WorldCom and the rest one can only wonder with some amount of trepidation where this is leading us, as this undoubtedly affects us all. Hartmann however, as in his previous works, doesn't just criticise from the sidelines, but leaves blame aside and suggests practical suggestions as to how to rebalance this costly error. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Ever Since the Boston Tea Party...
Review: As I was composing this review of Unequal Protection, I got another whiff of the smelly state of corporate dominance in political affairs. The Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, today upheld the constitutionality of the Copyright Term Extension Act (1998) in the case of Eldred v. Ashcroft. The CTEA is a de facto CPIA: a corporate profits insurance act. How did corporations, who lobbied for the CTEA and won out over the rights of the public domain, get to have more rights than people? That is one key question that author Thom Hartmann addresses in his book, subtitled "The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights."

In a democracy, writes Hartmann, the government protected the Commons - that which we all must share so that we all may enjoy it in perpetuity. The Commons used to include the air, the water, the forests and its wildlife, the land and its minerals, and even the electromagnetic spectrum (the airwaves). Government also authorized, through a charter, and regulated, through laws enacted with the public weal in mind, that legal agreement called the corporation. At the core of corporate power, writes Hartmann, lies the concept of the corporation as a person, with similar rights to those of natural persons (human beings), for whom the Constitution was presumably written, since nowhere in the document are corporations mentioned.

Indeed, for the first century of American history, no court has applied Constitutional rights to corporations. It wasn't until an 1886 case, Santa Clara County (CA) v. Southern Pacific Railroad (118 U.S. 394, 396, brought against a corporation for non-payment of a $25 fee!), that corporations were then assumed to be persons. Assumed, that is, not because the Court said they were, but because the headnote in the book recording the decision said they were. And although headnotes carry no legal weight, it was because of that erroneous assumption that courts ever since have been citing Santa Clara as establishing the "personhood" of corporations.

This was no small mistake, however. As Hartmann points out, corporations were quick to claim Constitution protection for free speech (First Amendment), privacy protection (Fourth Amendment), freedom from searches and seizures, double jeopardy, and self-incrimination for criminal wrongdoing (Fifth Amendment), and claims of anti-discrimination protections under the Fourteenth Amendment - the amendment that was presumably passed to free slaves. Not bad for a precedent that was "never voted by the public; never enacted by law; never stated by decision after arguments before the Supreme Court"! Indeed, in 1938, Justice Hugo Black noted, "Of the cases in this court in which the Fourteenth Amendment was applied during its first fifty years after its adoption, less than one half of one percent invoked it in protection of the Negro race, and more than fifty percent asked that its benefits be extended to corporations."

Hartmann takes pains to assure his readers that he is not anti-corporation, but he also thinks that the protections in law afforded to corporations since 1886 have been unequal, vis à vis those afforded to persons of the human kind. It took until 1920 for women to get voting rights, that is, the ability to affect the political process that every adult person enjoys. It took more than 100 years for human beings with African ancestry to be recognized as persons with the Civil Rights Act of 1965. The rights of workers to organize are only sporadically recognized even today.

Part of the unequal protection of which Hartmann writes is a function of corporate wealth which, in effect, buys favorable legislation. And part is the absurdity of legally equating corporate persons with natural persons:

<> natural persons have the strength of one; corporate persons can have the strength of millions;
<> natural persons are expected to operate under moral constraints; corporations are expected to make money;
<> natural persons eventually die; corporations are expected to outlive their founders, theoretically forever;
<> natural persons can be convicted of murder and executed; it is rare that a corporation convicted of causing death has its charter revoked;
<> natural persons pay taxes; most major corporations are net tax receivers;
<> natural persons reside in a country; corporations can reside in any country, or no country, and can change residence (usually to evade taxes) overnight;
<> natural persons can give money to politicians; corporations can give millions to politicians;
<> natural persons can't own other persons; corporations can own other corporations;
<> natural persons can vote; corporations can't vote - yet.

So what would happen if corporations were deprived of the "personhood" they were erroneously granted in the first place? Corporations might start acting like good citizens, looking out for the community in which they do business, obeying laws, paying taxes, keeping the environment clean, paying a living wage... Any number of good things can happen: corporations would have no rights, only privileges designated by the state in which they are chartered. And because they would exist at the pleasure of a government created by human beings, they would be held accountable to the public or lose their "life" (their charter). Right now, only unions, churches, unincorporated businesses, partnerships and even governments have privileges rather than corporate rights. Yet all seem to be thriving without being defined as "persons" under the law.

Unequal Protection includes a chapter (3) on the first anti-corporate protest: the Boston Tea Party, which was actually a protest against the (British) East India Company. The book concludes with a hopeful section on "Restoring Democracy as the Founders Imagined It." What Hartmann may be saying is that perhaps it's time that we get back a little power for the people.

Rating:
Summary: slightly off balance...
Review: As some reviewers have mentioned, the writer is not a lawyer. While his consultations with lawyers may have been helpful there does to seem to be some basic misunderstandings of corporate law. As many reviewers note the book focuses, to some degree, on a Supreme Court case mentioning, in dictum, that the corporation is similar to a person. While this is nice to know the writer largely ignores the fact that corporate law is a creation of state law, primarily Delaware- federal common law is no more. Each state applies principles of limited liability and the analogy of corporation as a person differently. I would agree that courts (and legislatures) have misapplied the analogy as corporation as person- but the book ignores that the analogy is very fitting in many respects (I say this as a recent law grad, I've read a lot on corporate law- though I'm no expert by any means!). The book is very interesting but should be taken with a grain of salt. Also, the writer missed an opportunity to educate readers on the intricacies of statutes, common law/stare decisis, and their relationship- it would help the readers see the problem in the broad scope at which it operates- and in general to understand how the judicial and legislative branches operate in a common law legal system. Lastly, the writer totally ignored Limited Liability Companies (LLC), you think you hate corporations?, you should worry more about these babies.
None of these issues should damper many people's disdain of some corporate behavior, but a broader reading of corporate law material would be helpful to understand the variety of issues in corporate law (Introduction to Business Organizations by Klein and Coffee, is boring but helpful).

Rating:
Summary: Well written and thoughtful
Review: Did you ever ask yourself, "How do they get away with it?" When you read or hear, what seem to be unreal stories in the news about a corporation that was caught doing the most unthinkable, treacherous thing? Well this book explains how they get away with it.

It's a great book. Well written and thoughtful. It's a powerful tragedy that unfortunately is non-fiction. The protagonist is our own democracy, which apparently was mortally wounded 116 years ago. I'm not sure what disturbs me more, the unyielding greed of corporations, our own lack of attention to defend our democracy and human rights or the fact that I had no clue what "Corporate Personhood" was before I read this book.

I mean the idea that our government currently recognizes a corporation, as a "person" with equal human rights is just wrong. Isn't it? I could understand having separate laws to protect corporations. The corporation itself is a protection against limited liability. But they also have all of the same human rights and protections that we have under the US Constitution and The Bill of Rights. That's just wrong!

Over the past 5 years we have averaged 7,000 bankruptcies per hour. This has contributed to a loss of 2.2 million jobs in the past two years. Our National Debt was $-909 billion in 1980. In 2001 it topped $-7,600 billion in debt (yes, that's $7.6 trillion). And yet in 1982 the US had only 13 billionaires but in 2000 they had increased to 274 billionaires. In the US, the richest 20% earn 49.2 percent of the national income. That same 20% own 85% of the wealth, while the remaining 80% of us own only 15% of the nations total wealth.

All of this economic disparity hangs on a clerical error in the head notes of an 1886 Supreme Court case. The language has no actual legal basis but has been spun into the most significant and yet little known lie in world history, otherwise know as "Corporate Personhood."

The Boston Tea Party was a protest against a corporate trade monopoly (the East India Co.), protected by a corrupt British government. Ninety thousand pounds of tea, owned by the East India Co. (not the British government), was destroyed, worth over $1 million by today's standard.

The US Constitution was primarily concerned with preventing this kind of corruption from happening. And so, the Constitution specifically prevents corporations from having political influence. It has never been legally amended to allow corporations to make any political contributions or to have lobbyists. And yet in 2000 corporations paid $1.1 billion in political contributions directly to the 2 main parties.

How do they get away with it? Read the book.

Rating:
Summary: great book!
Review: Explains how big corporations became the plague on the world they are today. Great research, easy to read, well-organized.
Hope he continues in this area.

Bill
Backwards, Down and to the Right

Rating:
Summary: ILLITERACY
Review: Hartmann has set a record of sorts. It is hard to find a single work which, simultaneously, is illiterate in economics, law, history, and political science. How could someone spend so much time on a subject and still end with so little understanding? Judging from his prior writings, the answer seems to lie in a deeply-rooted hostility toward modern civilization. Indeed, in "Last Hours," he tells us basically that the last ten thousand years of human development, starting with the agricultural revolution, were a blunder. In this light, it is not surprising that he shows such bile about the corporate mode of business association. This development in capitalist societies has allowed an astonishing transformation in economic prosperity. There are those, like the Marxists, who hate capitalism for its failures. And then there are those, like Hartmann, who hate it for its successes.

If you liked "Triumph of the Will," you will like Hartmann's writings. If you didn't, find something else to read. If the topic of optimal economic organization interests you, I recommend some readings for grownups: anything by Oliver Williamson or Michael Jensen. Both authors have paperback books sold on the Amazon site.

Rating:
Summary: Assault on the commons
Review: Hartmann's analysis of the roots of corporate power is essential reading. He undermines the policies that have protected corporations for over a century. Legally protected today, corporations were long subject to general suspicion. Government charters to operate a business contained many constraining clauses that are now missing. How and why did this change come about? Should government constraints be restored, and if so, how would be brought about? Hartmann presents the history, issues and solutions to the growing corporate takeover of the global commons.

He opens by reminding us that the "commons" once represented a village pasture, shared by all. In modern times he argues the same concept embraces the entire planet. The sharing implies common sense be applied to its use. We are beginning to understand our planet is "the commons" for all humanity. Every human has some rights to that commons, but shares a responsibility for its well being. That set of rights and responsibilities is set by the community as a whole, not by any one individual. The community concept, however, is based on the idea that its members are essentially equal. The corporation, due to its amorphous structure and unique powers has gone beyond community ideals.

The history of corporate power rests on continued attempts to upgrade an "artificial" entity to a "natural" one. Hartmann traces the erosion of that ideal through this book. An early chip was taken when Queen Elizabeth I granted Francis Drake "freedom from liabilitie" to go pirating. It was an omen for the future. Although the Framers of the Constitution of the United States were vociferous in their resistance to corporations, events pushed their ideals aside. In a rapidly developing economy and to confront European competion, corporations arose and grew. As they grew, they sought not only protection from State taxation, they sought to further their ends by political action, something nearly all governments restrained. After many tries, they seemed to have accomplished it in 1889 during a court case over the collection of property taxes.

Hartmann details the events surrounding the case, pointing out that the corporate "victory" of achieving "personhood" is spurious. It was not part of the decision and added as a post judgement note. He suggests that railway lawyer Stephen J. Field likely influenced the writing of the notes by court reporter John C.B. Davis. The victory for business interests virtually turned the 14th Amendment to the Constitution on its head. Business now had the same "rights" as any naturally born human - privacy, investment, political activity and right to trial. Where a state issuing a corporate charter previously had the right to withdraw it for improper activity, a corporate existence was now sacrosanct. Given the vague nature of the corporation, "improper behaviour" could punish individuals, but not the corporation's
existence. Hartmann explains how this condition has led corporations to invade the global "commons" with impunity, ravaging nature to acquire resources and markets.

People often ask "if corporate dominance is so bad, what will you replace it with?" Hartmann states "the suggestion i'm putting forth in this book is to try democracy." The solution is simple enough - a return to Jeffersonian principles. That doesn't mean a regression to an agrarian society. It means, instead, a restoration of democratic practices - the raising of humans to their natural place of dominance over artificial entities. He encourages local communities to begin redefining their laws to reflect the concept that corporate organizations are not people. Once that precedent is established, the democratic ideal can be restored by revising laws and constitutions up through the political hierarchy. From communities through the states to the national government. He stresses that while there will certainly be resistance and scare tactics, enough popular pressure can restore those lost ideals.

Rating:
Summary: Grab your musket!
Review: Here's a piece of history they didn't teach you in school. At a time of public dismay over CEO shenanigans, Thom Hartmann recounts a crime far beyond anything even the Enron boys could aspire to: the corporate theft of the Fourteenth Amendment. Unlike many historians, Hartman is a great story-teller, and this tale of Gilded Age intrigue will keep you reading. His account of how a key Supreme Court decision was rewritten by an overreaching clerk -- and the stunning consequences of that act -- will anger you even as it makes you reconsider much of what you thought you knew about our history.