> Duke’s American Tobacco Company (ATC) moved to the cutting edge of this process when it repelled legal challenges to its monopoly by drawing on new notions of

> Duke’s American Tobacco Company (ATC) moved to the cutting edge of this process when it repelled legal challenges to its monopoly by drawing on new notions of corporate personhood in the wake of the Fourteenth Amendment [...] Though the amendment referred to “persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which suggests human persons, lawyers attempted to use the amendment to shield corporate “persons” from state regulations. With the ATC’s win in court, the corporation claimed an enhanced legal personhood, protection from states, and status as a private rather than public entity. Unrestrained, the ATC rapidly gobbled up companies across the United States and the globe, catapulting Duke to spectacular wealth and power To be fair, this is corporate legal shenanigans, not scrappy, innovative, hard work.