Corporate Law

Oriental scholars discuss the concept of corporate personalitywithout any reference to Islamic law. A leading proponent of this view isJoseph Schacht; a western scholar of jurisprudence who contended that Islamicjurisprudence is limited to individual personality and devoid of corporate laws,hence, contractual agreements between corporations has no basis in Islamiclaw. Several scholars and researcher have responded with sufficient literatureon the status of an artificial person in Islamic law, but there are still issues withthe legal implication of corporate personality in the event (...) of financial distress.This study aims to explore Islamic threshold on fundamental principles ofcorporate personalities and its contemporary applications in the situation offinancial trouble. The study will employ the analytical approach in describingthe essential characteristics of a corporation as inherent in Islamic law throughinterpolation from the natural person and the possibility of adapting the existingconventional bankruptcy laws. This study employs an analytical approach to Islamic literature and regular related works. The study found out that eventhough the concept of financial distress has basis in Islamic law, it remainscomplicated as it entails insolvency, bankruptcy and interdiction in a debtorcreditorrelationship. Overall, further efforts need to be done to put theseconcepts into contemporary and applicable perspectives without violatingIslamic fundamental principle of justice and fair dealings. (shrink)

Jensen and Meckling’s 1976 definition of the firm as a legal fiction which serves as a nexus for contracts between individuals sits well with the Coasean narrative on the firm while at the same time being at odds with it. Available interviews with Jensen shed little light on the origins and meaning of this unusual definition. The paper shows how the definition captured, and was a response to, the American socio-political context of the early and mid-1970s, and traces how Jensen (...) and Meckling employed it once they themselves got immersed in the public debate about corporate responsibility and regulation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It also considers Jensen and Meckling’s place in the literature on the economics of corporate law developed mostly in the 1980s. (shrink)

The fear that business corporations have claimed unwarranted constitutional protections which have entrenched corporate power has produced a broad social movement demanding that constitutional rights be restricted to human beings and corporate personhood be abolished. We develop a critique of these proposals organized around the three salient rationales we identify in the accompanying narrative, which we argue reflect a narrow focus on large business corporations, a misunderstanding of the legal concept of personhood, and a failure to distinguish different kinds of (...) constitutional rights and the reasons for assigning them. Corporate personhood and corporate constitutional rights are not problematic per se once these notions are decoupled from biological, metaphysical or moral considerations. The real challenge is that we need a principled way of thinking about the priority of human over corporate persons which does not reduce the efficacy of corporate institutions or harm liberal democracies. (shrink)

Within contemporary societies, several global tech-giants have gained enormous power, while generating various disputes vis-à-vis their end-users, local governments, and regulators. This article proposes that the Jewish concept of Covenant can help legal scholars (and wider society) in addressing this complex legal reality. The article presents the challenge of disequilibrium between the above four parties, against the main points of conflict: the requirement of customer consent; clear contractual provisions upon entry; option for reasonable customer exit; limitations on the platform’s ability (...) to exercise unilateral termination; as well as profile-based discrimination, and liability for mere intermediation. Next, we introduce the biblical concept of Covenant and its unfolding in Jewish tradition, and conceptualize three main covenantal principles (“Rs”): Responsibility: God and humans are both conceived as moral agents. Reciprocity: God as a caring law giver, open to human appeals. Reasonability: divine instruction as initially intelligible. We then demonstrate briefly how the principle of explainability is exercised in the biblical “law narratives” and how the story of Balaam stresses the significance of moral agency which cannot hide behind “mere-intermediary” claims. The article then revisits the tech-giants vs. tech-users relationship, demonstrating how covenantality offers novel ways to conceptualize the noted conflicts between the parties. (shrink)

Cyber risk has become one of the greatest threats to firms in recent years. Accordingly, boards of directors must be continually vigilant about this danger. They have a duty to ensure that the companies adopt appropriate cybersecurity measures to manage the risk of cyber fraud. Boards should also ensure that the firm disclose material cyber risk and breaches. We examine how the board’s gender composition can influence the extent of such disclosure, based on a sample of the companies listed on (...) the S&P/TSX 60 Index over the period 2014–2018. Results show evidence of a positive association between the presence and level of cybersecurity disclosure and board gender diversity. However, the board must boast a critical mass of at least three women before this positive impact can be observed. Our findings contribute to the debate on the importance of gender diversity by adding the concept of the positive influence of heterogeneity on cyber disclosure. We also augment the literature on the critical mass of women in boardrooms by providing empirical evidence that three or more women constitute the threshold for better governance. Our study has important implications for investors, stakeholders and regulators. If investors wish to increase cybersecurity disclosure, they should ask for more diversified boards. Our findings support regulators in their efforts to increase women’s representation on boards by providing empirical evidence of better outcomes with this type of board composition. (shrink)

This article argues that corporate law has become the legal platform upon which is erected a social process impeding society’s capacity to lucidly reflect on its primary ends; in this sense, corporate law is in conflict with social autonomy. This process is described here as a social feedback loop, in the structural centre of which lies the corporation which imposes its own purpose as an irrational social end, i.e. irrespective of its potentially catastrophic social consequences. The article argues that resolving (...) the conflict between corporate law and social autonomy is impossible, because it presupposes a change of social paradigm towards one where corporate law as business organisation law has no obvious fit. This questions the social legitimacy of corporate law, signifies its non-permanence and thus opens up the field for seeking radical alternatives in the future. (shrink)

This paper discusses the legal aspects of the activities of transnational corporations. The relevance of the subject matter is determined by the significant impact exerted by transnational corporations on the world economy in general and on the economic situation of the country in which such corporations are registered as a subject of legal form of ownership in particular. Quality functioning of transnational corporations is an effective factor for the formation of sustainable development. This study reveals and determines the relationship between (...) the scale of activity of transnational corporations and their legal status within the framework of both single countries and entire economic communities, the individual subjects of law of which are transnational corporations. The practical significance of this study lies in the possibility of identifying and stating key aspects that play a significant role in assessing the practical activities of transnational corporations in the context of existing legal law with the ability to use the identified patterns in specific legal practice. The results of this study can be of significant practical importance for employees in the field of legal support for the activities of transnational-scale corporations, who are faced with the need to deeply analyse the legal aspects of the activities of these organisations and provide management of such structures with timely, highquality legal recommendations regarding the correction of the activities of these organisations in the context of the existing legal field. (shrink)

A recent French reform has revised the legal definition of the corporation. In essence, the law stipulates that the corporation must be run with due regard to the social and environmental impacts of its activity. It also introduces the notion of raison d’être and affords the possibility for any corporation to assign social or environmental purposes to itself, defined in its by-laws. This reform is similar to recent reforms in the UK and the US, but is based on an original (...) and distinctive theoretical argument. The aim of our article is to analyze the fundamental tenets of this reform and their implications for the theory of the corporation. It shows that the new law is based on a new positive definition of the enterprise as not only an economic organization or a productive entity, but more fundamentally a space for innovative collective action. We argue that this view of the enterprise challenges our conceptualization of the corporation in two important ways. First, it shows that the traditional theories overlook the activities of the enterprise and their related impacts, and that the corporation is not necessarily the appropriate legal vehicle for the innovative enterprise. Second, it suggests that the stipulation of the enterprise’s purpose or raison d’être in the corporate by-laws can provide new promising legal foundations for corporate responsibility. (shrink)

The purpose of this symposium is to shed light on the genealogy of the idea of a business corporation, an economic institution which has long been regarded with a mixture of awe and apprehension. Each of the four original contributions addresses the history of some of its key features. In the process, each contributor reveals some of the insights that history has to teach us regarding the central concepts that inform contemporary debates about the nature of the corporation, the contours (...) of the corporation's purpose, the sources of corporate power, the functions of corporate law, the duties of directors, the status of shareholders, and the legitimacy of corporate rights. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

An examination was performed on whether director interlocks enabled the adoption of a dividend policy for the benefit of the parent company in the ownership structure. Specifically, the study investigated the dependence of the impact of the central position in the board network on the probability of dividend payment. Based on sample of firms listed on Polish capital market, it was observed that the more central the company’s position in the interlocking directorate network, the more likely it is to pay (...) dividends to a subsidiary. This effect is related to the eigenvector centrality. The results obtained suggest that corporate financial policy can be spread across firms through the board network. (shrink)

In this Response to Hasko von Kriegstein, I defend several claims, including that the publicly-traded corporation and its assets are unowned; that managers may stand in fiduciary relations to shareholders that do not require managers to maximize shareholder wealth; and that the rights of a shareholder and of the owner of a privately-held corporation may differ fundamentally.

Strudler rejects shareholder primacy and argues that, once contractual obligations have been fulfilled and shareholders have received a reasonable return on investment, corporate executives may use corporate wealth for the general good. He seeks to establish this claim via an argument that, contrary to the received view, shareholders do not own corporations. After raising some questions about the latter argument, this commentary goes on to argue that the question of corporate ownership is a red herring. The argument for shareholder primacy (...) that Strudler wants to reject does not rely on the premise that shareholders own the firm. (shrink)

For centuries in the UK and elsewhere, charities have been widely regarded as admirable and virtuous organisations. Business corporations, by contrast, have been characterised in the popular imagination as entities that lack a capacity for moral judgement. Drawing on the philosophical literature on the moral agency of organisations, we examine how the law shapes the ability of charities and business corporations headquartered in England to exercise moral agency. Paradoxically, we find that charities are legally constrained in exercising moral agency in (...) ways in which business corporations are not. Implications for charities and business corporations are then explored. (shrink)

This work offers a new theory of what it means to be a legal person and suggests that it is best understood as a cluster property. The book explores the origins of legal personhood, the issues afflicting a traditional understanding of the concept, and the numerous debates surrounding the topic.

Often overlooked in studies of the corporation is the recognition that the modern corporate form and its power are rooted in the issue of race, and more specifically, in racial oppression. The racialized roots of the corporation become exposed when we acknowledge the significance of slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment to the evolution of the corporate form along with the discriminatory role corporations have traditionally played in shaping race relations in the U.S. This article draws upon several theoretical perspectives, primarily (...) critical race theory, management theory, legal studies, diversity management, and corporate social responsibility to introduce the corporate responsibility to race concept and establish it as a new basis for understanding why corporate persons have a responsibility for improving race relations. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to examine the role of the board of directors in corporate law in Jordan.

The purpose of the symposium is to address global and domestic insolvency law issues.

While researchers in business ethics, moral philosophy, and jurisprudence have advanced the study of corporate agency, there have been very few attempts to bring together insights from these and other disciplines in the pages of the Journal of Business Ethics. By introducing to an audience of business ethics scholars the work of outstanding authors working outside the field, this interdisciplinary special issue addresses this lacuna. Its aim is to encourage the formulation of innovative arguments that reinvigorate the study of corporate (...) agency and stimulate further cross-fertilization of ideas between business ethics, law, philosophy, and other disciplines. (shrink)

This article attempts to think through the logic and distinctiveness of the early Royal Society's position as a metropolitan knowledge community and chartered corporation, and the links between these aspects of its being. Among the knowledge communities of Restoration London it is one of the best known and most studied, but also one of the least typical and in many respects one of the least coherent. It was also quite unlike the chartered corporations of the City of London, exercising almost (...) none of their ordinary functions and being granted very limited power and few responsibilities. I explore the society's imaginative and material engagements with longer-established corporate bodies, institutions and knowledge communities, and show how those encounters repeatedly reshaped the early society's internal organization, outward conduct and self-understanding. Building on fundamental work by Michael Hunter, Adrian Johns, Lisa Jardine and Jim Bennett, and new archival evidence, I examine the importance of the city to the society's foundational rhetoric and the shifting orientation of its search for patronage, the development of its charter, and how it learned to interpret the limits and possibilities of its privileges through its encounters with other chartered bodies, emphasizing the contingent nature of its early development. (shrink)

Some societies used to impose liability on inanimate objects, a practice we’d now regard as silly and confused. When we punish corporations today, are we making similar mistakes? Here I consider some important sources of philosophical skepticism about imposing criminal liability on corporations, and I argue that they admit of answers, which places punishing corporations on stronger footing than punishing inanimate objects. First, I consider the eligibility challenge, which asserts that corporations are not the right kind of thing to be (...) punished. Second, the reductionist challenge insists that corporate culpability always reduces to individual culpability. I suggest that progress can be made in addressing these challenges by asking the right law-focused questions and attending to recent developments in criminal law theory and moral philosophy. (shrink)

This project investigates critical issues and events related to Trek Therapeutics experience as a public benefit corporation. We will present and discuss how Trek differentiates itself in an industry where the attention is on high prices supporting high investor returns. Trek’s benefit corporation status helped it garner favorable attention in some respects, but has also presented challenges, particularly when it comes to attracting new capital.

More than half of the S&P 500 and the Fortune 500 companies publish corporate social responsibility reports. CSR is at the heart of a new form of corporation, the benefit corporation, which requires the pursuit of a social purpose as well as pursuit of profit. Thirty-four states, plus the District of Columbia, have enacted benefit corporation legislation. Most laws require that benefit corporations publish reports on their social purpose performance using a third-party assessment format. The purpose of this paper is (...) to analyze 1,530 benefit corporations identified by B Lab and the state of Minnesota for proof of social purpose performance, as demonstrated in reports on their websites. The study found some companies with excellent reports, but those had had a CSR focus prior to becoming benefit corporations or had been Certified B Corporations. However, most benefit corporations in the study had no published reports; many have no websites. (shrink)

Welch and Ly register three objections to my argument that the Rawlsian paradigm offers no resources for formulating a normative theory of corporate governance. In this brief response, I note that while I agree with the first of these objection, I don’t think it poses any serious trouble to my argument; the other two objections, on the other hand, I am less convinced by. I then offer two alternative strategies for bringing Rawls to bear on business ethics, which don’t involve (...) trying to apply his principles of justice to the corporation. Finally, I conclude with a reflection on why people are so insistent on talking about Rawls in the first place. (shrink)

How can we know whether we are punishing the same corporation that committed some past crime? Though central to corporate criminal justice, legal theorists and philosophers have yet to address the basic question of how corporate identity persists through time. Simple cases, where crime and punishment are close in time and the corporation has changed little, can mislead us into thinking an answer is always easy to come by. The issue becomes more complicated when corporate criminals undergo any number of (...) transformations—rebranding, spinning-off a division, merging, changing ownership, changing management, swapping lines of business, etc. These changes are common among all corporations, including those trying to conceal or limit liability for past crimes. This article takes a first step toward developing a workable and philosophically satisfying theory of corporate personal identity and discusses its prospects for fulfilling the retributive, rehabilitative, and deterrent purposes of criminal law. (shrink)

In meeting legal or professional fiduciary obligations, a fiduciary can sometimes come to share a special moral relationship with her beneficiary. Special moral relationships produce special moral obligations. Sometimes the obligations faced by a fiduciary as a result of her moral relationship with her beneficiary go beyond the obligations involved in the initial fiduciary relationship. How such moral obligations develop is sometimes under the control of the beneficiary, or of an outside party. As a result, the fiduciary can be the (...) target of a distinctive kind of moral manipulation; it is sometimes possible to force a fiduciary to perform a particular act by placing her into circumstances under which she is morally obliged to perform it, because all her other options are morally unacceptable. This is moral blackmail. Moral blackmail is a powerful force within many sorts of human interactions. By understanding the ways in which fiduciaries become vulnerable to moral blackmail, we can better understand the pressures faced by fiduciaries in keeping their personal and professional lives separate, the dynamics of certain kinds of employment negotiations, and the injustice that results when women take on the bulk of the work within caring professions. (shrink)

What critical characteristics do firms have that determine the scale and scope of corporate social responsibility activities they undertake? This paper examines two disparate predictors of corporate social performance. First, using the lens of the resource-based view, we examine the role of alliance network centrality on corporate social performance. We find that centrality enhances corporate social performance. Second, we investigate how board composition affects corporate social performance. Specifically, drawing on stakeholder theory, we find that the percentage of female directors predicts (...) greater corporate social performance. In addition, we look at the influence of outside directors on this relationship. Our findings show that the presence of more outside directors positively moderates the relationship between female directors and corporate social performance. (shrink)

Over four decades, research and policy have created layers of understandings in the quest for "good" corporate governance. The corporate excesses of the 1970s sparked a search for market mechanisms and disclosure to empower shareholders. The UK-focused problems of the 1990s prompted board-centric, structural approaches, while the fall of Enron and many other companies in the early 2000s heightened emphasis on director independence and professionalism. With the financial crisis of 2007–09, however, came a turn in some policy approaches and in (...) academic literature seeking a different way forward. This paper explores those four phases and the discourse each develops and then links each to assumptions about accountability and cognition. After the financial crisis came pointers in policy and practice away from narrow, rationalist prescriptions and toward what the philosopher Stephen Toulmin calls "reasonableness". Acknowledging that heightens awareness of complexity and interdependence in corporate governance practice. The paper then articulates a research agenda concerning what "reasonably" good corporate governance might entail. (shrink)

This article seeks to contribute to the thinking of forms of corporateness, sociality and authority in the context of, but also beyond, neoliberalism, the neoliberal state and neoliberal accounts of the corporation. It considers neoliberalism in relation to the theological genealogies of modernity, politics and economy, and the way in which neoliberalism itself functions as a secular religion—one which intensifies liberal individualism and involves a blind faith in the market redefining all social interactions in terms of contract. I turn to (...) the theological genealogies of sovereignty and economy, and of the corporation, as a way of grounding a radical consideration of collectivity and sociality. For, while the rise of neoliberalism is associated with the growth of multi-national or trans-national corporations, the privatisation of state assets and the corporatisation of public institutions, each of these involve not a diminishing of the state or the project of state sovereignty but rather its reformulation, reaffirmation and intensification. The corporation, despite being redefined as the interaction of fundamentally self-willing and contracting individuals operating in the market, is still fundamentally intertwined with state sovereignty. Attempts to address or respond to corporate power need to go beyond calls for greater regulation of corporations, increased corporate social responsibility or even the desire to eliminate corporate personhood. Rather, what is required is a greater emphasis on the notion of corporateness that undergirds the theological genealogy of the corporation—for if neoliberalism functions as a religion then part of the solution may be a theological one. (shrink)

Many proponents of corporate agency take corporations to be responsible for their conduct, but few take them to merit rights over and above the rights of their members. Hasnas (2016) argues that, given a widely-held view of liberal political theory, corporate agency entails that corporations should have the right to vote. In response, I show that there are problems in appealing to liberal political theory, and that the view of voting Hasnas actually endorses need not be accepted. Should it be, (...) however, the implications go far beyond the right to vote. (shrink)

This paper offers the concept of “justice failure,” as a counterpart to the familiar idea of market failure, in order to better understand managers’ ethical obligations. This paper takes the “market failures approach” to business ethics as its point of departure. The success of the MFA, I argue, lies in its close proximity with economic theory, particularly in the idea that, within a larger scheme of social cooperation, markets ought to pursue efficiency and leave the pursuit of equality to the (...) welfare state. As a result, the core ethical responsibility of business actors is to avoid profiting off of market failure. After reviewing this approach I challenge its emphasis on efficiency. I argue that just as we note the suboptimal efficiency of actual markets, we should also take seriously the suboptimal equality of actual welfare states. Taking this idea seriously results in a whole other set of ethical responsibilities for businesses to take into account; in addition to market imperfections and regulatory lacunae, managers should also avoid profiting from, and exacerbating, structural inequalities and injustices. I offer an outline of the kinds of injustices and inequalities that would have bearing on business ethics, and the kinds of ethical responsibilities that this approach suggests that business actors should take into account. (shrink)

This study provides insights on sector-specific characteristics, challenges and issues that affect corporate responsibility in relation to ethnicity and gender on arts boards. Using stakeholder theory, the study explores how arts board composition sets the scene for dynamics that affect CR. Data analysis is based on interviews with 92 board members and stakeholders sitting on 66 arts boards in Australia. Results suggest that the dynamism of gender and ethnic diversity on arts boards makes them responsive to CR; however, their presence (...) does not always lead to CR. For diverse boards to lead to CR, our findings indicate the significance of board member attributes of passion, skill and capability of developing networks, irrespective of gender and ethnicity. The article advances understanding of the implications and relevance of ethnic and gender diversity on non-profit boards and contributes to an important yet under-researched body of literature. (shrink)

The business and human rights movement shares several goals with the Benefit Corporation movement: corporations respecting human rights; maintaining a “wide aperture” so that all impacts of a company on people and communities are addressed; and creating rigorous standards of conduct and means of accountability. This paper argues that nonetheless the movements are traveling along parallel tracks and thus missing an opportunity for mutual learning that can improve their effectiveness. The BHR movement can look to B Corps for concrete examples (...) of viable companies that value human rights intrinsically and not just where there is a “business case” to do so. The B Impact Assessment, the B Corp certification tool, can better ensure that B Corps are in fact respecting human rights by adopting BHR standards. And both movements must give greater consideration to the potential contradiction between unlimited scaling—a key goal of B Corps—and the ability of large multinational corporations to respect human rights. (shrink)

Social scientists have paid insufficient attention to the role of law in constituting the economic institutions of capitalism. Part of this neglect emanates from inadequate conceptions of the nature of law itself. Spontaneous conceptions of law and property rights that downplay the role of the state are criticized here, because they typically assume relatively small numbers of agents and underplay the complexity and uncertainty in developed capitalist systems. In developed capitalist economies, law is sustained through interaction between private agents, courts (...) and the legislative apparatus. Law is also a key institution for overcoming contracting uncertainties. It is furthermore a part of the power structure of society, and a major means by which power is exercised. This argument is illustrated by considering institutions such as property and the firm. Complex systems of law have played a crucial role in capitalist development and are also vital for developing economies. (shrink)

There is an important but underappreciated ambiguity in Hobbes’ concept of personhood. In one sense, persons are representatives or actors. In the other sense, persons are representees or characters. An estate agent is a person in the first sense; her client is a person in the second. This ambiguity is crucial for understanding Hobbes’ claim that the state is a person. Most scholars follow the first sense of ‘person’, which suggests that the state is a kind of actor – in (...) modern terms, a ‘corporate agent’. I argue that Hobbes’ state is a person only in the second sense: a character rather than an actor. If there are any primitive corporate agents in Hobbes’ political thought, they are representative assemblies, not states or corporations. Contemporary political theorists and philosophers tend to miss what is unique and valuable about Hobbes’ idea of state personality because they project the idea of corporate agency onto it. (shrink)

This book opens with a simple introduction to financial markets, attempting to understand the action and the players of Wall Street by comparing them to the action and the players of main street. Firstly, it explores the definition of a security by its function, the departure from the buyer beware environment of corporate law and the entrance into the seller disclose environment of securities law. Secondly, it shows that the cost of disclosure rules is justified by their capacity to combat (...) irrationalities, fads, and panics. The third section explains how the structure of class actions is designed to improve deterrence. Next it explores the economic harm from insider trading and how the law fights it. In sum, the book shows how all these parts of securities law serve the virtuous cycle from liquidity to accurate prices and more trading and how the great recession showed that our securities regulation reacted mostly adequately to the crisis. (shrink)

In meeting legal or professional fiduciary obligations, a fiduciary can sometimes come to share a special moral relationship with her beneficiary. Special moral relationships produce special moral obligations. Sometimes the obligations faced by a fiduciary as a result of her moral relationship with her beneficiary go beyond the obligations involved in the initial fiduciary relationship. How such moral obligations develop is sometimes under the control of the beneficiary, or of an outside party. As a result, the fiduciary can be the (...) target of a distinctive kind of moral manipulation; it is sometimes possible to force a fiduciary to perform a particular act by placing her into circumstances under which she is morally obliged to perform it, because all her other options are morally unacceptable. This is moral blackmail. Moral blackmail is a powerful force within many sorts of human interactions. By understanding the ways in which fiduciaries become vulnerable to moral blackmail, we can better understand the pressures faced by fiduciaries in keeping their personal and professional lives separate, the dynamics of certain kinds of employment negotiations, and the injustice that results when women take on the bulk of the work within caring professions. (shrink)

In this study, we examine the determinants of corporate environmental responsibility, as well as the relationship between legal systems and CER as measured by a unique set of global environmental cost data. Results of our analyses show that firms’ legal origins affect CER, which requires a long-term management perspective. Specifically, our results indicate that civil law firms exhibit significantly higher levels of CER than common law firms. In addition, results of an auxiliary test suggest that manager shareholding has a significant, (...) nonlinear relationship with CER. The association between a firm’s legal origin and its CER performance remains robust after controlling for the effects of managerial ownership and issues related to endogeneity. Our findings imply that although the majority of corporate law studies in the past few decades provide support for the common law system emphasizing the maximization of shareholder value and investor protection, the civil law system stressing the maximization of stakeholder wealth and the importance of CER may become more influential in the coming decades as CER becomes central to firms’ operations. (shrink)

The chapter argues that the traditional theories of legal personhood, which associate legal personhood with the holding of rights, are outdated and should be reassessed. Many modern theories of rights come into conflict with our convictions regarding who or what is a legal person. For instance, most jurists would agree that foetuses are not natural persons but new-born children are. However, if we apply the so-called interest theory of rights, we will note that foetuses hold various rights, such as rights (...) against certain forms of abortion. If right-holding entails legal personality, then foetuses are already legal persons. On the other hand, if we apply the will theory, which associates right-holding with the power to control others’ duties, then infants do not hold any rights at all – and are consequently not legal persons. This is why the chapter outlines an alternative theory of legal personhood. The main tenets of the theory are: (1) legal personality is not binary but rather a matter of degree, and (2) X’s legal personality involves primarily the endowment of X with incidents of legal personhood, much like ownership can be understood as consisting of separate but interconnected incidents. Rather than being a “solved” theoretical issue, the definition of legal personhood should occupy theorists more in the future. (shrink)

The Article analyzes the notion of legal “thinghood” in the context of the person–thing bifurcation. In legal scholarship, there are numerous assumptions pertaining to this definition that are often not spelled out. In addition, one’s chosen definition of “thing” is often simply taken to be the correct one. The Article scrutinizes these assumptions and definitions. First, a brief history of the bifurcation is offered. Second, three possible definitions of “legal thing” are examined: Things as nonpersons, things as rights and duties, (...) and things as property. The first two definitions are rejected as not being very interesting or serving any heuristic function. Conversely, understanding legal things as property is meaningful, useful, and helps to understand what it means to say that animals are legally things. Defining things as property has certain rather important implications, which are analyzed at the end of the Article. For instance, not everything needs to be either a person or a thing: The historical institution of outlawry involved treating individuals neither as legal persons nor as legal things. One must conclude that the person–thing bifurcation is less fundamental than is often assumed. (shrink)

This edited work collates novel contributions on contemporary topics that are related to human rights. The essays address analytic-descriptive questions, such as what legal personality actually means, and normative questions, such as who or what should be recognised as a legal person. As is well-known among jurists, the law has a special conception of personhood: corporations are persons, whereas slaves have traditionally been considered property rather than persons. This odd state of affairs has not garnered the interest of legal theorists (...) for a while and the theory of legal personhood has been a relatively peripheral topic in jurisprudence for at least 50 years. As readers will see, there have recently been many developments and debates that justify a theoretical investigation of this topic. Animal rights activists have been demanding that some animals be recognized as legal persons. The field of robotics has prompted questions about driverless cars: should they be granted a limited legal personality, so that the car itself would be responsible for damages? This book explores such concepts and touches on matters of bioethics, animal law and medical law. It includes matters of legal history and appeals to both legal scholars and philosophers, especially those with an interest in theories of law and the philosophy of law. (shrink)

In this symposium, panelists presented research on benefit corporations and certified b corps. In the last decade, new incorporation laws have emerged in several states that explicitly allow firms to pursue both social purpose and profit. Panelists presented an overview of alternative incorporation statutes, evaluated the degree to which companies are externally accountable, and hold themselves internally accountable, to a broader social purpose. The panel also discussed strategies for teaching about certified b corps in the classroom. Finally, the plenary discussion (...) centered on two themes: Is a need for a legally mandated broader social purpose an American problem? Is the benefit corporate structure going to get us where we need to be? (shrink)

This essay provides a genealogy of corporate personhood as it exists currently in US law and places moral personhood in a similar genealogical context. This treatment demonstrates that the two are inextricably intertwined in both conception and institutionalized practices. We would do well to dismantle both; meanwhile, however, corporate personhood's implicit illiberal notion of collective mentality and responsibility may suggest possibilities for establishing collective counterforces to oppose activities of transnational for-profit corporations and mitigate their devastating political, economic, and environmental effects (...) upon actual people and the ecosystems upon which we depend. (shrink)

Benefit corporation legislation has rapidly disseminated in the United States. Its advocates claim it is a necessary corporate form to address the unique needs of for-profit social enterprises, despite many scholarly and legal practitioners who doubt the need for or wisdom of adopting this organizational form. Others suggest that the legislation is flawed and deficiencies should be addressed. After reviewing the present status of benefit corporation legislation, this article contributes to the discourse arguing that benefit corporations are unnecessary under the (...) law; benefit corporation legislation does not enhance corporate law; benefit corporation laws create unnecessary new legal risks for both traditional and benefit corporations, and their respective directors; and third party certification in entity formation law is inappropriate. (shrink)