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

Capitalisn't

University of Chicago Podcast Network

Stigler Center, Chicago Booth, Socialism, Antitrust, University Of Chicago Podcast Network, Growth, 087667, Policy, Monopoly, Professors, Distortion, Research, Competition, Capitalisnt, Inequality, Promarket, Politics, Policymaking, Special Interest, Economics, Efficiency, Regulations, Chicago, Business, Markets, University Of Chicago, Kate Waldock, Capitalism, Friction, Bethany Mclean, Government, Macroeconomics, News, Education, Waldock, Georgetown, Microeconomics, Luigi Zingales, Zingales, Finance, Ucpn

4.5 • 584 Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2026

⏱️ 46 minutes

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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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I think the right way to go about this problem is to say corporations are people under the
0:04.4	Constitution, and they should have those rights that are appropriate for that type of person.
0:09.4	For example, we say that minors are people under the Constitution, but they don't have the
0:13.6	full panoply of rights that everyone else has. They have the rights that are appropriate for minors.
0:17.9	I think we should do something like that for corporations.
0:22.3	I'm Bethany McLean. Did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a
0:28.3	good idea? And I'm Luigi Zengalis. We have socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor.
0:36.0	And this is Capital Isn't, a podcast about what is working in capitalism.
0:39.9	First of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed?
0:44.5	And most importantly, what isn't?
0:46.5	We ought to do better by the people that get left behind.
0:49.4	I don't think we shouldn't kill the capital system in the process.
0:53.2	Everyone is familiar with a seemingly strange idea that corporations are legally treated as people.
0:59.0	But few people know the story behind how that actually came to be or why this bizarre, not really
1:05.1	legal loophole of sorts, but legal theory is shaping everything from the products we buy to the
1:10.0	elections we vote in.
1:11.3	The history behind this legal fiction is crazier than most people know. After the Civil
1:16.7	War, the 14 Amendment was written to guarantee equal protection for formerly enslaved people.
1:23.1	But almost immediately, cooperation began hijacking the amendment to challenge government regulation.
1:29.1	In fact, one of the statistics that he has is that most of the legal suit concerning the 14th
1:36.0	Amendment were not to protect former enslaved people, were to protect corporations.
1:40.1	So when Luigi refers to his argument, he means today's guest on capitalism, who is Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and the author of a wonderful book called We the Corporations. He points out a pretty glaring fact. The Constitution literally begins with We the People, not We the Corporations. And there is no hint that the founders ever intended to extend these
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