Liberalism and the Reinvention of Corporate Personhood

Corporations in the United States have for many decades sought to preserve and extend their power by claiming attributes and privileges reserved for natural persons.

Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation presents a political history of corporate ＂identity politics.＂ Wielding arguments derived from social movements in search of equity and equality, corporate advocates used identity-based claims not to ＂right＂ historical wrongs, but to peel back popular regulations designed to provide access to healthcare, safer workplaces and communities, and elections free from the influence of concentrated wealth. Looking beyond the courtroom, Kathleen J. Frydl argues that members of Congress played the decisive role in securing identity-based corporate powers. By couching their efforts to assist corporations as ＂fair play,＂ legislators turned modern liberalism into a strictly procedural philosophy, devoid of substantive claims and uninterested in power differentials. In a sweeping narrative, Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation places corporate identity politics at the heart of the modern conservative movement, the crisis of liberalism, and the fractured politics that define the current American political moment.

Kathleen J. Frydl holds a Ph.D. in history and specializes in American political development in the twentieth century. Her published work includes two books: the award-winning The GI Bill (2009), and The Drug Wars in America: 1940-1973, named one of Vox’s ＂Best Books We Read in 2014.＂ Writing for a general audience, her work has appeared in Vox, Dissent, The American Prospect, and the Washington Monthly. She is the author of the white paper, ＂Trade Not War: A New Approach to Supply-Side Counternarcotics Policy,＂ written for the Niskanen Center and published in April 2025.