Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Development of Corporate Personhood Law In Comparative Perspective, 1886-2014

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

With the rise of corporate capitalism and the establishment of the first great enterprises, American jurists and scholars struggled with the question of how to define the status of the corporation for the purposes of American law. The main point of contention concerned the degree to which the corporation should be considered as similar to a person; a natural entity with rights that could be separated from those of the corporation's owners. By the end of the 1920s, the debate had largely dissipated with the ascendance of a "realist" view that cast legal terms as largely empty signifiers. In recent years, corporate personhood has once again become a topic of public debate. Recently the Supreme Court re-visited the question of the proper scope for corporate rights: when and upon what basis should corporate entities engage in political speech and enjoy protections that citizens enjoy. The questions this research address are, what role (if any) did the legacy of the legal doctrine of corporate personhood play answering these questions, and in crafting American corporate regulation more broadly? And why has corporate personhood come to play this role in American law? To address these questions, the researchers undertake a mixed-method approach to analyze the development of corporate personhood law between 1886-2014. First, the researchers trace the historical development of the personhood doctrine through the web of legal citations. This allows them to identity the periods, cases, courts, and legal arenas where the personhood doctrine was deployed. Second, the researchers use a comparative historical analysis between the United States and England to explain why the doctrine of corporate personhood was especially appealing to American jurists. The researchers use archival material to assess the relative influence of economic, political, institutional, and cultural drivers of legal development. The overall goal of the project is to develop a cultural theory of the development of corporate law.