The Personification of the American Corporation in the Press, 1870-1920

• In Event: 601 - Section on Economic Sociology Paper Session. Open Topic

Abstract

Are corporations people? This politically and practically significant issue has reemerged as a topic of active public debate after the Supreme Court decisions of Hobby Lobby and the activism of Occupy Wall Street. This paper adds to a debate that has until now been limited to legal scholarship by challenging the mainstream narrative of the origins of corporate personhood. I analyze the process through which corporations became constructed as actors in the public sphere, an important but overlooked precondition for their construction as legal persons. Drawing from a textual analysis of newspaper documents, editorials, and political cartoons, I investigate the changing representation of the corporation in the American press. I find that it was groups organizing against corporations—namely farmers and liberal elites – who originally used corporate personification as a tool for to hold corporations accountable for misdeeds. Corporations responded by co-opting the discourse of their opponents, and ultimately used claims of personhood as tools to legitimate themselves both socially and legally. Corporate personhood now implies rights, but it once implied duties. This retelling of the origins of corporate personhood has important implications for understandings of the rise of the American corporation.

Author

• Carly Knight, Harvard University