Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T22:03:57.059Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Of Corporations, Courts, Personhood, and Morality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2016

Margaret M. Blair
Margaret M. Blair*
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Since the dawn of capitalism, corporations have been regarded by the law as separate legal “persons.” Corporate “personhood” has nonetheless remained controversial, and our understanding of corporate personhood often influences our thinking about the social responsibilities of corporations. This essay, written in honor of Prof. Thomas Donaldson, explores the tension in recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Delaware Chancery Court about what corporations are, whose interests they serve, and who gets to make decisions about what they do. These decisions suggest that the law does not unequivocally support Donaldson’s vision of corporations as “moral” persons.

Keywords

Corporate personhoodCorporate moralityCitizens UnitedHobby LobbyCorporate social responsibilityCorporate constitutional rights
Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 415 - 431
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allen, William T. 1992. “Our Schizophrenic Conception of the Business Corporation.” Cardozo Law Review 14.Google Scholar
Bebchuk, Lucian A., and Jackson, Robert J. 2010. “Corporate Political Speech: Who Decides?” Harvard Law Review 124: 83.Google Scholar
Berle, Adolf A. 1931. “Corporate Powers as Powers in Trust.” Harvard Law Review 44: 1049–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berle, Adolf A. 1954. The 20th Century Capitalist Revolution (Harcourt Brace).Google Scholar
Berle, Adolf A., and Means, Gardiner C. 1932. The Modern Corporation and Private Property. New York: Macmillan Co.Google Scholar
Blair, Margaret M. 2013. “The Four Functions of Corporate Personhood.” In Handbook of Economic Organization: Integrating Economic and Organization Theory, edited by Grandori, Anna, 440 – 461. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Blair, Margaret, and Pollman, Elizabeth. 2015. “The Derivative Nature of Corporate Constitutional Rights.” William & Mary Law Review 56: 1673–1734.Google Scholar
Business Roundtable. 1981. Statement on Corporate Responsibility.Google Scholar
Dodd, E. Merrick Jr. 1932. “For Whom are Corporate Managers Trustees?” Harvard Law Review 45: 1145–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donaldson, Thomas. 1982. Corporations and Morality. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Donaldson, Thomas, and Dunfee, Thomas W. 1994. “Toward a Unified Conception of Business Ethics: Integrative Social Contracts Theory.” Academy of Management Review 19(2): 252–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drucker, Peter. 1946. The Concept of the Corporation. New York: John Day Company.Google Scholar
Drucker, Peter. 1975. Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton. 1970. “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.” New York Times Magazine (Sept. 13) available at http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman-soc-resp-business.html.Google Scholar
Galambos, Louis, and Pratt, Joseph. 1988. The Rise of the Corporate Commonwealth: U.S. Business and Public Policy in the Twentieth Century. New York: Perseus Books Group.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. (1651) 2010. Leviathan. Edited by Shapiro, Ian. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kaysen, Carl. 1957. “The Social Significance of the Modern Corporation.” American Economic Review 47: 311–19.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 1689. The Second Treatise of Civil Government (Google eBook, Aug. 28, 2014).Google Scholar
Maier, Charles S. 1988. “Society as Factory” In In Search of Stability: Explorations in Historical Political Economy by Maier, Charles S., 19 – 69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, Edward S., ed. 1959. The Corporation in Modern Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Kelley, Charles R.T., and Thompson, Robert B. 2010. Corporations and Other Business Associations: Cases and Materials, 6th ed. New York: Wolters Kluwer.Google Scholar
Orts, Eric W. 1992. “Beyond Shareholders: Interpreting Corporate Constituency Statutes.” George Washington Law Review 61: 14.Google Scholar
Pells, Richard H. 1989. The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University.Google Scholar
Porter, Michael, and Kramer, Mark. 2006. “The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility.” Harvard Business Review, December.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. (1762) 2008. The Social Contract. Edited by Cole, G. D. H.. New York: Cosimo Classics.Google Scholar
Smith, Gordon. 1998. “The Shareholder Primacy Norm.” Journal of Corporation Law 23: 277–324.Google Scholar
Somer, A. A. 1991. “Whom Should the Corporation Serve? The Berle-Dodd Debate Revisited Sixty Years Later.” Delaware Journal of Corporate Law 16: 33–56.Google Scholar
Strine, Leo E. Jr. 2012. “Our Continuing Struggle With the Idea That For-Profit Corporations Seek Profit.” Wake Forest Law Review 47: 135–72.Google Scholar
Strine, Leo E. Jr. 2015. “A Job is Not a Hobby: Hobby Lobby and the Judicial Revival of Corporate Paternalism.” Available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?absract_id=2555816.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Totenberg, Nina. 2014. “When Did Companies Become People? Excavating the Legal Evolution,” NPR, July 28, 2014, available at http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Commerce. 1980. Business and Society: Strategies for the 19980s.Google Scholar
Wells, Harwell. 2002. “The Cycles of Corporate Social Responsibility: An Historical Retrospective for the Twenty-first Century.” University of Kansas Law Review 51: 77–140.Google Scholar
Wells, Harwell. 2013. “‘Corporation Law is Dead’: Heroic Managerialism, Legal Change, and the Puzzle of Corporation Law at the Height of the American Century.” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law 15(2) : 305–56.Google Scholar
Wishnick, David A. 2012. “Corporate Purposes in a Free Enterprise System: A Comment on eBay v Newmark.” Yale Law Journal 121: 2405–19.Google Scholar