Indiana University Press blog

Book review: Victorian Investments

"Victorian Investments is an outstanding example of the merits of economic cultural studies. ... This is a generous collection in every sense of the term, commendable for the breadth of its voices and for the wealth of information it offers both newcomers to and veterans of the study of Victorian finance." —Journal of British Studies

Further reading on recent Supreme Court decision and corporate personhood

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled by a 5-4 decision to ease restrictions on corporate spending on federal campaigns. The majority opinion of the Court was that the First Amendment right of free speech extends to corporations and unions, and that Congress cannot limit the amount of money they spend on political campaigns.

Fundamental to the Court’s decision is the legal doctrine of corporate personhood, or the idea that corporations have the same rights as individuals. Taking issue with the application of this principle in a case involving a film about Hillary Clinton produced by a conservative group, Justice John Paul Stevens writes in his dissent that “The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court's disposition of this case.”

Editors Purnima Bose and Laura Lyons agree with Stevens about the legal fiction of corporate personhood. In their forthcoming volume, Cultural Critique and the Global Corporation, they trace the history of the concept of corporate personhood from 1886, and explore the ramifications of the expansion of corporate rights for ordinary individuals and democratic processes. You can read more about their argument against corporate personhood in excerpts from the introduction to their volume and in Bose’s chapter on “General Electric, Corporate Personhood, and the Emergence of the Professional Manager.”