Financial History Issue 128 (Winter 2019) | Page 42

BOOK REVIEW  BY MICHAEL A. MARTORELLI guarantees applied to corporations as well as persons. The Court reasserted that con- clusion several times during the next 25 years. Indeed, more than half of the 14th Amendment cases decided by the Court between 1868 and 1912 involved corporate rights, while less than 5% involved the rights of African Americans—people who ostensibly had been that amendment’s main beneficiaries. Winkler traces the Court’s continuing assertion of corporations’ property rights through numerous cases it decided dur- ing the first third of the 20th century. He also notes several instances in which the justices failed to envision in the Constitu- tion liberty rights for those organizations. Regrettably, a series of different Court configurations failed to draw any sharp distinctions between those two italicized terms; so the author tries to do so through a tedious detailing of the legal arguments and findings in more than a dozen relevant cases. Happily, he intersperses that work with a very readable discussion of the economic and political environment of the times, including the activities of execu- tives, lawyers and justices alike. The author notes the unusual signifi- cance of a footnote written by Justice Harlan Fiske Stone in a little-known 1938 case that changed the nature of the Court’s activities for the next seven decades. Stone suggested that his colleagues defer to the ballot box and the political processes of government when confronting difficult economic questions. He believed the Supreme Court should focus more atten- tion on protecting the civil rights and liberties of minorities that were too fre- quently persecuted by the majority. Subse- quent courts did indeed plow new ground in recognizing civil rights and liberties long denied to racial minorities, socialist radicals and criminal defendants. But they also acknowledged and expanded rights WALL STREET WALKS such as freedom of association, freedom of speech and freedom of the press to cor- porations. The analysis and commentary in the book’s last few chapters are likely to stir some readers’ ire while comforting others who appreciate the position of the corporate form of business. Winkler writes with the vocabulary and style of a lawyer, not an historian. But it is worth plowing through his narrative to gain a more comprehensive view of cor- porations’ search for their civil rights than one can get from contemporary argu- ments over the most recent pronounce- ments in this area.  Michael A. Martorelli is a Director Emeritus at Fairmount Partners in West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, and a fre- quent contributor to Financial History. He received his MA in History from American Military University. Wall Street Walks takes visitors through the historic capital of world finance — the one- square-mile of downtown Manhattan known as “Wall Street.” Our visitors learn about people, places and events comprising over 200 years of history, as they walk among locations where it all happened. • Regular public tours daily, except Sunday. • Group and private tours available. Proud walking tour partner of the Museum of American Finance. CONTACT: www.WallStreetWalks.com tours@wallstreetwalks.com 212-666-0175 (office) 212-209-3370 (ticket hotline) 40    FINANCIAL HISTORY  |  Winter 2019  | www.MoAF.org