11 the body politic of the corporation

Latham, Earl

doi:10.4159/harvard.9780674865204.c11

Cited by 18 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…It can will and act through the groups of individuals who are its organs, just as a natural person can will and act through his or hers. Taylor (1902) Stage 1: Freund (1897), Laski (1916), Canfield (1917), Maitland (1927) Stage 2: Latham (1959), Nader, Green, & Seligman (1976) Stage 3: Millon (1990) Stage 2: Hessen (1979), Fischel (1982), Kraakman (1984), Coffee (1999), Hansmann & Kraakman (2001) Stage 2: Horwitz (1985), Hager (1989), Phillips (1994), Mitchell (1995Mitchell ( , 1999, Iwai (1999) Nature of the firm Firm is a fiction whose life and legal legitimacy derive from the state. In turn, the firm concedes to doing public good and subjects itself to state regulation.…”

Section: Contractual/aggregate Theory Of the Corporationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Agency Theory: The View from Law

Lan

Heracleous

2010

AMR

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We draw from legal theory to offer a fundamental rethinking of agency theory along three key dimensions: redefining the principal from shareholders to the corporation, redefining the status of the board from shareholders' agents to autonomous fiduciaries, and redefining the role of the board from monitors to mediating hierarchs. These dimensions contrast with classic agency theory, offering novel conceptions that can inform further theorization and empirical research in corporate governance.

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Section: Contractual/aggregate Theory Of the Corporationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Agency Theory: The View from Law

Lan

Heracleous

2010

AMR

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“…Any other reified representation therefore vies with the state and potentially threatens the rights of the individual. Those authors that tried to think through such approaches consistently, like Gierke and Maitland, have been accused of providing a “chilling” (Dan‐Cohen , p. 25) account of the ontology of association, which leads to the subordination of the individual to the collective (Hallis ) and ultimately to totalitarianism (Hayek [; Latham , p. 219). For this reason, this approach has been treated with hostility (Runciman , p. 198).…”

Section: Alternativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Specters, Inc.: The Elusive Basis of the Corporation

Veldman¹,

Parker²

2012

Business and Society Review

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In this article we discuss the political and economic consequences of the contemporary legal theory of incorporation. We argue that incorporation has developed historically in a way that makes it internally inconsistent, but that this inconsistency is useful for the powerful because of its legal and economic effects. The corporation can “shape shift,” which is very helpful for claiming some rights and disavowing certain responsibilities. Of course this flexibility comes at the expense of consistent concepts and this leads to the creation of what we term an “ideal‐type reified singular representation.” We go on to show the far‐reaching effects of this representation for legal studies, economics, and political theory, and show it worked in the pro‐corporate decision in the recent Citizens United case. We conclude by providing several alternative ways to think about the nature of corporate organization.

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“…In a period when the nature and role of many national-states is being significantly modified, legal pluralist analyses are likely to be particularly pertinent. In the economic sphere, Macauley's (1963) discussion of 'non-contractual relations', Henry's (1983) considerations of 'private justice', and Latham's (1961) analysis of 'The Body Politics of the Corporation' have lost none of their pertinence (Hunt, 1993;Pearce, 1993); but these need to be supplemented by similar explorations of other areas of social life. This is really what has been undertaken by Rose and Valverde,4 but, unfortunately, some of the 'new' concepts they have deployed are not particularly helpful in this task; indeed, they are not all terribly original.…”

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confidence: 97%