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Timothy K. Kuhner is Associate Professor at Georgia State University College of Law. He teaches mainly in the areas of international and comparative law. Before moving to Atlanta, Tim spent three years as Associate Professor of Anglo-American Law at the University of Navarra in Spain. During this time, he researched the role of money in politics in Western European democracies. Educated at Bowdoin College and Duke Law School, but inspired by foreign viewpoints, Tim brings a wide-ranging, critical perspective to the study of democratic integrity.
List of contents
1. The Question Raised by America's Design
2. Free Market Democracy
3. Corporations Speak
4. Consumer Sovereignty
5. Why Capitalism Governs Democracy
6. Plutocracy
7. Capitalism and Democracy Reconciled
About the author
Timothy K. Kuhner is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Auckland.
Summary
As of the latest national elections, it costs approximately $1 billion to become president, $10 million to become a Senator, and $1 million to become a Member of the House. High-priced campaigns, an elite class of donors and spenders, superPACs, and increasing corporate political power have become the new normal in American politics. In Capitalism v. Democracy, Timothy Kuhner explains how these conditions have corrupted American democracy, turning it into a system of rule that favors the wealthy and marginalizes ordinary citizens. Kuhner maintains that these conditions have corrupted capitalism as well, routing economic competition through political channels and allowing politically powerful companies to evade market forces. The Supreme Court has brought about both forms of corruption by striking down campaign finance reforms that limited the role of money in politics. Exposing the extreme economic worldview that pollutes constitutional interpretation, Kuhner shows how the Court became the architect of American plutocracy.
Capitalism v. Democracy offers the key to understanding why corporations are now citizens, money is political speech, limits on corporate spending are a form of censorship, democracy is a free market, and political equality and democratic integrity are unconstitutional constraints on money in politics. Supreme Court opinions have dictated these conditions in the name of the Constitution, as though the Constitution itself required the privatization of democracy. Kuhner explores the reasons behind these opinions, reveals that they form a blueprint for free market democracy, and demonstrates that this design corrupts both politics and markets. He argues that nothing short of a constitutional amendment can set the necessary boundaries between capitalism and democracy.
Additional text
"This book made me realize just how dangerous supreme courts can be for matters of inequality and democracy."
