So, kids are supposed to learn this stuff in high school or 1st year college in some US Government or Political Sci course.
Obviously, somebody has to update the general concept to include the current system of neoliberalism. As close as I can get is a simple inversion. At one point the economic system was supposed to serve the needs of a liberal democratic society. Now this relationship has been inverted so that the society has been reconstructed to serve the needs of the economic system. Reversing this inversion is at the core of the struggles that are going on all over the neoliberal world., i.e. getting back to a `proper' relationship. The conceptual problem is seen in the idea of the what is good for society, what is good for the economy. These should not be conflated as they are by the capitalist class.
There's about four hundred years of political philosophy to go over beginning with a deeper problem of how we conceive human and civil rights. These are currently thought in the old Lockian sense as possessions, much like property. But this is wrong. You can not transfer your rights to someone else the way you might be able to transfer property. So that has to be sorted through.
There is of course the fiction that corporations have `rights'. Then there is the crazy recent decision that money is equivalent to freedom of speech.
So, it's little wonder liberals have completely lost sight of their own tradition and their own history of philosophy and politics.
That's all I can come up with at the moment... Back to a bunch of computer bullshit.
CG