It is not altogether surprising that during this 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, we also commemorate a similar milestone in the rise of capitalism: the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s foundational text, The Wealth of Nations. Not surprising because the history of the United States is deeply intertwined with the business community’s impact on so much of American life, including our systems of justice.

Smith believed that business best serves society when guided by the fair administration of justice, constrained only by the rule of law. But the relationship between justice and business does not travel in one direction, with the former solely shaping the latter. In fact, from the earliest days of our republic, the reverse has also been true; many of the constitutional framers were themselves businessmen who carried their own economic interests into the architecture of American law.

And in the centuries that followed, the business community only further cemented that influence. At times, the private sector’s pursuit of profit led to justice policies that dehumanized, over-criminalized, and trapped people in inescapable cycles of punishment and poverty. In other periods, business interests served as a genuine force for fairness, rehabilitation, and reform. Often, both were true at once.  

THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY

On America’s 250th anniversary, we know that business will continue shaping the next 250 years of American justice. But will it be on the right side of history when it does?

The wrong side is easy to spot. From the beginning, the transatlantic slave trade was protected and strengthened through law for the benefit of the private actors who profited from this cruel and inhumane practice. Indeed, the development of today’s insurance industry was in large part to protect investors from the highly risky and brutal task of moving enslaved individuals over hazardous seas. After the 13th Amendment abolished slavery “except as a punishment for crime,” businesses began leasing incarcerated people—disproportionately individuals of color—as unpaid labor, soon causing arrests to rise and fall according to companies’ labor needs.

Today, it appears more subtly, like in the privatization of aspects of our justice system. When private prisons profit off incarceration, the incentive can tilt toward revenue over rehabilitation. And when our overburdened courts contract services like debt collection and supervision to private companies that charge exorbitant fees poor people cannot afford, justice is no longer blind; it’s for the wealthy.

THE CASE FOR ACCESS TO JUSTICE

But the right side is also clear. Though the business community was a driving force behind slavery, it should not be forgotten that many Northern merchants funded abolitionist organizations, newspapers, and legal campaigns. When the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right to government-funded counsel for individuals who cannot afford an attorney extended to the states, the private sector helped build what became the country’s gold-standard public defender system through the Ford Foundation investment in the 1960s.

Law firms and corporate legal departments have built on that foundation ever since, making pro bono representation for matters where no right to counsel exists, a standard part of their operating models. They collectively contribute millions of hours in free legal services annually to people who could not otherwise access help.

WHAT BUSINESSES CAN DO

It does not stop at deploying resources to shore up our justice systems. As the most trusted institutions in society, employers and businesses can influence justice outcomes on a scale like no others. That includes supporting public policy reforms, to changing corporate policies to increase fairness and economic opportunity for all, to helping de-risk public discourse on criminal justice reform. Businesses and their leaders are leading in ways that would have been unthinkable a few decades earlier.

This public shift is best encapsulated by the Business Roundtable’s 2019 Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, which affirmed that a corporation should consider all stakeholder interests—not just shareholders—in its operations and governance, including its customers, employees, suppliers, and communities. Indeed, as Smith argued, the incentive for doing so is not charity, but in business’s own self-interest: Fair conduct drives mutual benefit. This reframing is aligned with a growing coalition of businesses and their leaders, including chambers of commerce that have publicly embraced advancing justice as an appropriate role for the private sector.

At my organization, the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice (RBIJ), we’ve seen hundreds of businesses across the U.S. and the UK use their influence to do exactly that. Employers are stepping up to advocate for sensible public policy reforms for the 77 million Americans with a criminal record, including record sealing, driver’s license suspension reform, and occupational licensing reform. It also means companies hiring overlooked talent based on merit, not the stigma of an old record, like fellow Fast Company Impact Council Member Tony Bedard’s Frontier Co-op (also a member of RBIJ’s Workforce & Justice Alliance). And when business leaders speak publicly to the value of this work, it helps normalize that people are more than their past and deserve a fair chance to contribute to their communities. 

Companies that center justice as a strategic business imperative can be confident that doing so is not only the right thing to do, it aligns with their employees’ expectations, customers’ demands, and a better bottom line. That alignment is essential for businesses and society to thrive together. In Smith’s own words, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

Maha Jweied is CEO of the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice.