State nonprofit corporation laws generally provide that voting members of the corporation may see the “books and records” of the corporation for a proper corporate purpose. But what is the scope of the books and records that the members can see? An appellate court in California grappled with that question recently and came up with a narrow answer for the types of accounting books and records a member could see. A member can see the financial statements and have access to the general ledger of the corporation, it said. But the member cannot get access to “any piece of evidence about the past,” such as contracts, receipts, bank records and copies of checks that she contended were necessary to...