Zoe M. Savitsky discusses how corporations became “persons” in the law and developed the power to speak, express themselves, and deceive.
Health Inc Seminar Series is co-hosted by the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, the DLSPH’s Centre for Global Health, and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Governance, Accountability and Transparency in the Pharmaceutical Sector.
Business corporations “speak” or “express themselves” often in contemporary life, in ways that are familiar and quotidian: through advertising, sponsorships, donations, political commitments, reports, and so on. Many have asserted that a significant portion of that speech is untrue, false, misleading, deceptive, or otherwise constitutes mis/disinformation. Many thousands of litigants across the world have sought to hold corporations from the asbestos, chemical, fossil fuel, lead, medical implant, pharmaceutical, tobacco, and other industries to account for speech/expression that downplayed product harms and fomented doubt and uncertainty about the reality of those harms.
But how did corporations start speaking/expressing themselves in the first instance? This talk tells the story of how what we call “corporations” became “persons” in the law and how they developed the power to speak/express themselves, a tale that begins millennia ago. This story of corporate personification and power intersects with the histories of other critical structures in Western society, including the state, the monarchy, and the Church. And it sheds light on how and why the corporation today sometimes has the power not just to express itself, but to deceive.
Recommended readings:
Montgomery, W. & Lyon, T. (2026). Greenwash Action Lab. Available at: https://www.greenwashaction.com/
Oreskes, N. & Conway, E.M. (2012). Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues From Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change New York: Bloomsbury.
Merchants of Doubt website: https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/
Ripken, S.K. (2019). Corporate Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stern, P.J. (2023). Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Have questions about this event?
Contact Centre for Global Health at globalhealth.dlsph@utoronto.ca
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