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The article focuses on the U.S. Supreme Court's struggle with corporate identity through an in-depth look at the Justices' papers in First Amendment cases over the past forty years. It mentions decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission on refusing to design a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple violated the state's antidiscrimination law. It also mentions objections to the enforcement of state antidiscrimination laws.

Abstract: By contrast with the U.S., where oral history is valued by corporate bodies and where oral historians actively engage with business history, British oral historians continue to regard elite oral history with deep suspicion. And for their part, U.K. business historians and archivists remain skeptical about the value of oral testimony. Few British oral historians venture beyond a well-worn focus on working-class experience, the marginalized and the voiceless. While advocacy-led oral history should remain a key focus for oral historians, so must we also use our methodology to document our society more widely and to step outside our comfort zones and engage with interview subjects which challenge our radical credentials. This paper explores reasons for the marked contrast of attitude to elite oral history between Britain and the U.S., arguing that it is rooted in the rather different origins of oral history in the two countries. It draws on corporate oral history project work at the British Library—such as oral histories of the British publishing industry, the Tesco supermarket chain, Royal Mail, branding consultancy Wolff Olins, and the financial center of the City of London including Barings Bank—to argue the case for oral history's contribution to the public understanding of business history and corporate culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Held in abeyance by the Cold War and the preeminence of the nation-state over the past fifty years, the legitimacy of the corporation is once again in dispute. New kinds of private agencies and social actors have emerged to raise questions and, in some cases, intervene directly in the governance of major corporations. Often, corporate engagement is out of the public view-being a conversation amongst financial elites about common interests. In other cases, however, shareholder activism is a public affair played out in the full glare of the media at annual general meetings. In this paper social activists' corporate engagement strategies are evaluated utilizing three proprietary data- bases which enable analysis of the patterns of activists' shareholder resolutions with respect to the financial structure and environmental performance of target corporations. An analytical framework is introduced, referencing two models of the firm, the nature of corporate assets (tangible and intangible), and public expectations of corporate performance. Utilizing Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility data on social activists' shareholder resolutions it is shown that these types of resolutions can be differentiated according to the nature and volume of activists' resolutions and the motive forces driving intervention. It is also shown that, for all the differences between institutional investors and social activists, they may share the same approach to realizing shareholder value depending on the nature of the corporation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]