KENT GREENFIELD

Author and Professor of Law at Boston College

The LAtest:

  • Corporations Are People. Thank Goodness. - The Boston Globe

  • Back To School: BC’s Kent Greenfield Talks Corporate Law - Law360

  • Book Review: Corporations Are People Too - Dorf on Law

About Kent Greenfield

An internationally-recognized scholar of constitutional law and corporate governance, Kent Greenfield is Professor of Law and Dean’s Distinguished Scholar at Boston College Law School. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Chicago Law School, Greenfield is the author of three books, including Corporations are People Too (And They Should Act Like It) for Yale University Press. He is a frequent public commentator on broadcast and cable news programs, having appeared on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera, and Fox. Read More

 
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NEWLY RELEASED

CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE TOO

“For anyone interested in what constitutional rights corporations should possess, or in corporate rights and responsibilities generally, this book is a must read. Greenfield is one of the very few law professors in America with a serious background in both constitutional and corporate law, and his double expertise is reflected in almost every chapter of the book…One of the great strengths of this book is its ability to distinguish easy and hard questions. Since the hard ones are, well hard, Greenfield discusses them with subtlety and gives the topics the deep attention they deserve.”

-Eric Segal, Dorf on Law

Are corporations people? It’s a heated debate. The Supreme Court says yes. Cases like Citizens United say corporations can claim constitutional rights of people — including free speech, due process, even religion. Meanwhile, millions of Americans worry that corporations are taking over politics and perverting democracy. So… are corporations people? Law Professor Kent Greenfield provides an answer: Sometimes. Some rights don’t make sense to give to corporations: The right to vote. The right to serve on juries. Other rights are necessary for businesses. The right to property. The right to access courts, (otherwise, or no one will invest in them). Rights like speech are more complicated. Businesses can sometimes misrepresent the truth, but should be free to communicate about their goods and services. Even with politics, we shouldn’t exclude businesses from the public square. When politics are divisive and tribal, businesses with a global, modern viewpoint offer something vital to our national conversation. But the dangers of corporate personhood are real. Corporations amassed wealth and use speech rights to skew laws to their benefit. This lets them amass even more wealth. Our democracy AND our economy are harmed. How to break this cycle? By changing corporations themselves. Now, corporate personhood rights are used to protect the elites who run businesses. In the future, We should require corporations to look after the interests of other stakeholders — employees, for example. If corporations were more democratic, their involvement in democracy would not be a problem. If corporations are to be people, they should act like citizens. Curious to hear more? Read Kent Greenfield’s new book: CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE TOO (AND THEY SHOULD ACT LIKE IT), available now from Yale University Press.
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