Corporate Personality Research Articles

Corporate Personality and Piercing the Corporate Veil

It is a long established principle of law that a company upon its incorporation is both an association of its members and a separate person from its members . This means that a company is regarded by law as a person and acquires corporate personality as a result: own assets , enter into contracts and be a party to legitimate actions.

International corporate constituency as a human problem

ABSTRACT This article frames constituency in relation to international corporate persons (ICPs) as a Jessupian ‘human problem’, constructively and politically. Drawing from examples in international trade law and international investment law it demonstrates the transformative power of ICP interests in the making of contemporary international economic law (IEL). It then analyses the logics of the economic and legal thinkers who facilitate this power in IEL and suggests these logics enabled a corporate constituency that separates the interests of the law from the interests of humans, both as subjects of law and as sources of institutional legitimacy. In the process, it shows that at least one ‘human problem’ with IEL’s corporate constituency—and by extension IEL itself—is that it is based on domestic market wisdoms projected internationally. By failing to account for the political and legal influence of the most significant transnational market participants, IEL is structurally insulated from human problems.

Research on the Perfection of Disregard of Corporate Personality in Enforcement

China's current disregard of corporate personality system has several prominent problems in the mandatory enforcement procedures, such as different identification standards, difficulty in starting the enforcement procedures, and lack of supporting systems. Perfecting the application of the disregard of corporate personality system in the enforcement process can effectively alleviate the "execution difficulty" problem to a certain extent. In judicial practice, to solve the problem of difficult implementation of the main body of the company caused by the control of shareholders' abuse of the company's independent personality, on the one hand, it is necessary to improve China's company law and other related legal systems, formulate supporting standards, and incorporate the common circumstances of corporate legal personality denial into judicial interpretation. On the other hand, we should strictly grasp the scale in the execution procedure and deny the person who abuses the company's independent personality.

"That Blessed Spirit in a bodily Shape": Institutional Holiness and Corporate Personality in John Henry Newman's Thought

"That Blessed Spirit in a bodily Shape": Institutional Holiness and Corporate Personality in John Henry Newman's Thought

Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons by Lisa Siraganian

Reviewed by: Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons by Lisa Siraganian Geoffrey R. Kirsch Lisa Siraganian, Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons. Oxford UP, 2021. v + 270 pp. The primary subject of Lisa Siraganian’s Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons is not a literary but a legal fiction: the artificial personhood of corporations as legal entities endowed with rights and duties of their own. Recently placed in bad eminence by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores (2014), corporate personhood is often encapsulated by critics and proponents alike with a question-begging slogan: corporations are people. In truth, the corporate fiction is no less ambiguous than the literary fictions that Siraganian explores. Is the corporation best understood as an association of individual people, or as an autonomous entity distinct [End Page 803] from its members? Can it form, communicate, and act on intentions in the same manner as a flesh-and-blood person? And how should its differences from natural people inform its legal status? Siraganian’s argument rests on a familiar leitmotif in law and literature scholarship: without the irritable reaching after fact and reason necessary to adjudicating legal responsibility, literature can better probe and problematize the ambiguities of the corporate person. She makes a compelling case for the particular relevance of American modernism, her area of expertise. Not only did modernism roughly coincide with a period of intense debate over corporate personhood among legal scholars; but it also, with its many coteries and (as enunciated most famously by T. S. Eliot) its aesthetic of “impersonality” (33), posed similar tensions between the individual and the collective. Above all, Siraganian writes, modernist writers were “operating a veritable literary and cultural laboratory on the question of collective intention” (30). Intention serves as Siraganian’s primary bridge from the legal to the literary, as she posits a tacit equivalence between the corporation and the modernist art-object by way of a single ontological problem: “how minimal could intention be and still be sufficient?” (31) The relation of the modernist art-object to its creator, Siraganian suggests, resembles that of the corporation to its actions: if a found poem or a Duchamp “Readymade” could offer sufficient indicia of creative intention to constitute art, so even the smallest tokens of collective action and expression might suffice to endow a corporation with mind, intention, and personality. This interest in collective intention, Siraganian suggests provocatively, in turn implies a “genetic connection” (34) between naturalism and modernism: where the latter movement formalizes the problem of collective intention, the former thematizes it. This genealogy helps to justify the fact that in a book titularly about modernism, the two most wholly convincing chapters actually focus on classics of the naturalist canon. While Siraganian is not the first critic to propose corporate personhood as a crux of Frank Norris’s The Octopus and Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier, her readings of these two great novels of business are at once original and eminently persuasive. As Siraganian contends in the first chapter, The Octopus dramatizes “the epistemological difficulty of knowing a corporate person’s meaning” (44). Norris’s farmers mistakenly rely on the “solemn pledges” (68) made in person by individual railroad company agents, when in fact the corporation has carefully avoided entering into any legally enforceable contracts with them. Siraganian shrewdly links Norris’s interest in corporate intention and expression to both the jurist Oliver [End Page 804] Wendell Holmes, Jr. and the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe: all three thinkers, she explains, conceptualize intent not as a subjective mental state but as a quality of particular actions and expressions. This objective, external redefinition allows for the possibility of corporate intention and meaning, but also produces a cacophony of external signs purporting to represent the corporation’s speech. Chapter 2 examines this unfortunate consequence, first by scrutinizing the equation of corporate money with speech that underwrote Citizens United and then, somewhat anachronistically, by highlighting the incoherent, commodified nature of “corporate speech” (83) in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s late-career writings on Hollywood. Chapter 3 in turn moves from speech and intention to the broader question of...

The legal personality of transnational corporations in private international law

The legal personality of transnational corporations in private international law

To the legal personality of transnational corporations

To the legal personality of transnational corporations

Are Corporations Responsible for Human Rights Violations Under International Law?

In the 1970s, high-powered multinational companies were regarded as agents of European colonial powers. This prompted a tidal wave of support, particularly from developing States for irresponsible corporate behavior. This LL.M. thesis posits that because States are failing to prosecute irresponsible corporate behavior and human rights abuses, international law provides a way to attribute liability to private corporations. It demonstrates the existence of numerous entities other than States and the United Nations in the international domain and dissects the oft-repeated objections by state-centric skeptics. This LL.M thesis scrutinizes international legal personality and reflects on the quasi-international legal personality of corporations. It chronicles the United Nations’ impact on transnational corporations and multinational companies compared to individuals under international law. Multiples sources of international law, utilizing transnational legal theory, are compiled to impute liability to private corporations. It then maps a meandering course from the Nuernberg Military Tribunals to the United Nations, then to the International Criminal Tribunals and corroborates its central thesis. What is more, it exposes the unwitting handiwork of intertwining sources of international law, whereby our conventional international legal order attributes liability to corporations. The denouement unveils an unforeseen source of international law that gives credence to the central thesis.

A Seat At The Table

Abstract Aotearoa New Zealand acknowledges mātauranga Māori in the two Acts and one Memorandum of Understanding recognising the ‘personhood’ status of three geographical regions—Te Awa Tupua, Te Urewera and Taranaki Maunga. They blend the legal fiction of corporate personhood with the already always understanding of human-nonhuman kinship and entanglement of M!ori philosophy, Māori knowledge and wisdom, and Māori epistemology. Through kaitiaki (trustees) these three entities have volition in their ongoing maintenance, development negotiations, and ‘land-use’, and ‘the rights, powers, duties and liabilities of a legal person’. These attributes suggest something more than mere volition in self-management and protection: they suggest agency. This article explores the implications of nonhuman agency as potential for political voice. As representatives of entanglement for all being—animal (including human), vegetable and elemental—and as a matter of justice they are, perhaps, obliged to participate in democracy and the nation is, perhaps, obliged to give them a ‘seat at the table’. As political agents with equal status to human and corporate persons Te Awa Tupua, Te Urewera and Taranaki Maunga might unsettle settler politics and challenge the imbalances of the Anthropocene.

Role of Corporate Finance Law in Corporations

This paper has focused on the role of corporate finance law in corporations. Corporations, in Pakistan has been governed by the Companies Act, 2017, aims to maximize the profit by minimizing the risk, possesses a separate legal personality having rights and duties towards the outside world. As the word corpus means body; Companies enjoys separate legal personality from its shareholder, members and directors. British East India Company was the first business corporation that have earned profit for its members. A company is formed by due process of law and not otherwise. Company if is created by limited number of shareholders i.e. two to fifty it is a private company and in other case it is a public company. A public company formulated by due process of law possesses separate corporate personality, the liability of its members is limited and also has many other distinct characteristics. Corporate Finance Law is legal aspect of financial management of a public corporation and focuses to manage the finance of a company in legal ways. It governs the decision making process in the company and provide a six step process of financial decision making, it helps to reduce agency cost and transaction cost by tackling agency relations between different limbs of the company i.e. shareholders, managers and third party. By all these means it objects to achieve the basic aim of a company i.e. to earn profit and minimize the risk.

Theories of Corporate Personality: Global View

This article examined the concept of corporate personality and identified the different approaches adopted in the application of the principle in India, Singapore, America, England, Ghana and Nigeria. It is apt and interesting.

Formation of soft adaptation skills among graduates of higher educational institutions

The article considers the study of the features of socialization of graduates of higher educational institutions, young professionals in the modern labor market. It is focused on the requirements of modern employers, which have been studied for several years in the construction and architectural industries. If a few years ago employers paid attention to the so-called hard skills that can be checked using a variety of exams, tests (professional competence, knowledge of foreign languages, computer skills, etc.), now the most important are soft skills - universal competencies that are difficult to quantify. These very relevant skills include communication skills, the ability to work in a team, creativity, punctuality, balance, responsibility and the ability to adapt to the new conditions of the modern market.
 The study and analysis of employers' requirements allowed us to conclude that the most significant and popular qualities can be called the "3-C-formula": communication skills, creativity and corporate identity. It is difficult to imagine any professional activity without communicating with other people: they can be colleagues, customers, subordinates, managers, etc.
 The article describes the psychological and psychophysical signs of successful communication. Special attention is paid in the article to cultivation of the above-mentioned qualities, starting with the audience of third-level education applicants, masters.
 The article also provides a comprehensive interpretation of the concept of "creativity" and "innovation". The article also analyzes the concept of "corporate identity" as the key to successful professional activities of the team for the common good, the overall success of a particular company. The concept of a "corporate person", which is common in modern psychology, is also defined.

International Corporate Constituency as a Human Problem

This article sets out a high-level framing of constituency in relation to international corporate persons (ICPs) as a Jessupian ‘human problem’. It then draws from examples in international trade law and international investment law to demonstrate the transformative power of ICP interests in the making of contemporary international economic law (IEL). From there, it analyzes the logic of the terms used by IEL’s economist and lawyer architects and suggests these logics enabled a corporate constituency that separates the interests of the law from the interests of humans, both as subjects of law and as sources of institutional legitimacy, accelerating during and after the 1970s. In the process, it shows that at least one ‘human problem’ with IEL’s corporate constituency is that it is legally insulated from human problems and explores solutions.

STATE AND CORPORATION IN AMERICAN POPULIST POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1877–1902

AbstractThis article examines the political theory of the late nineteenth-century American Populist movement, with a particular focus on its theories of state and corporation. Recent scholarship on populism has tended to present the phenomenon as a variant of direct democracy intrinsically opposed to intermediary bodies, a feature consistently traced back to American Populism as well. In this account, American Populists opposed new discourses of corporate personhood and free incorporation in the late nineteenth century owing to their tendency to distort natural bonds between peoples and leaders and to disperse the popular will. This article questions the tenability of this opposition through a close contextual engagement with original Populist texts. As the first self-declared ‘populist’ movement in modern history, Populists theorized about the usage of corporate personality for their own co-operatives and put forward ambitious visions of American statecraft, breaking with the proprietary individualism that characterized Jeffersonian agrarianism before. The article focuses on two particular genres of Populist thinking: first, their advocacy of the corporate form for their co-operative farm organizing and, secondly, a specifically statutory vision of state reform. It concludes with reflections on how these findings destabilize assumptions governing the current populism debate in political theory and American historiography.

Disguised Plagiarism

Disguised Plagiarism

Essentials of a Valid Contract: A Comparative Study of Islamic Law and the Contract Act, 1872

Islamic Law and Pakistani Law have identical basic ingredients to conclude the contract. This term paper will explore the comparison of the ingredients of contract in Islamic Law and the essential requirements of contract in the Contract Act, 1872. The concept of Sighah is identical to the concept of agreement but major difference is the free consent. Sighah includes free consent of the parties but in the Contract Act, 1872 the free consent is treated as an independent ingredient of contract. Contracting parties is the other ingredient in Islamic Law of Contract, Islamic Law provides that a person who is competent to understand the risk and liability. There are some impediments imposed by Islamic Law upon the contracting capacity i.e minority, lunacy, insanity, death illness, insolvency, coercion and forgetfulness. The Contract Act, 1872 also put some exception to the contracting capacity. Minor, person of unsound mind and person disqualified by law is incompetent. Classical Islamic Law only honor the contractual capacity of a natural capacity but Pakistani Law also recognizes the separate corporate personality of companies and corporations. In Islamic Law it is either an offer or not but no otherwise but there is an exception to this general rule that is the case of auctions. Islam law recognize auctions in which one invites others to offer some bid. Invitation to treat is not recognized in Islamic Law. Pakistani Law give room to invitation to treat. Pakistani Law honor auctions, transfer of share etc by invitation of offer.

Corporate Personality, Purpose, and Liability

Questions about corporate personality and purpose ramify differently depending on context. For example, the question whether or not, and in what sense, a corporation is, or may be, a “person” will be understood and answered differently if framed as a question of metaphysics, morality, social perception, politics, or law. The same is true of the question whether, and if so, what purposes are attributable to corporations. Recognizing the value of disentangling legal from parallel but non-legal constructs, in this chapter I examine how and why the law personifies groups, and how it modulates the attribution of actions – and liability for same – to corporate persons partly on the basis of corporate purpose. The primary aim is to clarify how corporate purpose mediates the individuation and attribution of actions, and liability for same, to corporations. A secondary aim is to show that legal conceptions of corporate personality and purpose are primordial relative to moral and social conceptions, insofar as reliance on law enables the self-constitution and -presentation of groups.

Artificial Intelligence, LLC: Corporate Personhood for AI

Our legal system has long tried to fit the square peg of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into the round hole of the current tort regime, overlooking the inability of traditional liability schemes to address the nuances of how AI technology creates harms. The current tort regime deals out rough justice—using strict liability for some AI products and using the negligence rule for other AI services—both of which are insufficiently tailored to achieve public policy objectives. Under a strict liability regime where manufacturers are always held liable for the faults of their technology regardless of knowledge or precautionary measures, firms are incentivized to play it safe and stifle innovation. But even with this cautionary stance, the goals of strict liability cannot be met due to the unique nature of AI technology: its mistakes are merely “efficient errors”—they appropriately surpass the human baseline, they are game theory problems intended for a jury, they are necessary to train a robust system, or they are harmless but misclassified. Under a negligence liability regime where the onus falls entirely on consumers to prove the element of causation, victimized consumers must surmount the difficult hurdle of tracing the vectors of causation through the “black box” of algorithms. Unable to do so, many are left without sufficient recourse or compensation. This Article proposes a new framework to regulate AI technologies: bestowing corporate personhood to AI systems. First, the corporate personality trait of “limited liability” strikes an optimal balance in determining liability—it would both compensate victims (for instance, through obligations to carry insurance and a straightforward burden of causation) while holding manufacturers responsible only when the infraction is egregious (for instance, through veil-piercing). Second, corporate personhood is “divisible”—meaning not all corporate personality traits need to be granted—which circumvents many of the philosophical criticisms of giving AI the complete set of rights of full legal personhood. Third, innovation incentives weigh heavily in favor of shifting to a tort regime better tailored to the potential promises and unique harms of AI.

Impact of Corporate Personality on the Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Turnover Rate :Based on the Corporate Review of Job-Planet

Impact of Corporate Personality on the Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Turnover Rate :Based on the Corporate Review of Job-Planet

Piercing/lifting the corporate veil to combat economic crimes in Uganda

In Uganda a company is a separate legal entity from its directors, shareholders or employees. This is called corporate personality or corporate veil. This means, inter alia, that as a general rule, the actions or omissions of a company cannot be attributed to its directors, shareholders or employees. However, case law from Uganda shows that there have been instances in which companies have been used or attempted to be used by their directors to commit economic crimes such as embezzlement. The Companies Act and the Anti-Money Laundering Act provide for circumstances in which the corporate veil can be lifted. Since the coming into force of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, Ugandan courts have not yet invoked it to lift the corporate veil. However, there is rich jurisprudence from Ugandan courts (especially in civil cases based, partly, on the Companies Act) on the meaning of the corporate veil and the circumstances in which it can be pieced/lifted. Courts have also dealt with the question of lifting the corporate veil in criminal matters. The purpose of this article is to highlight that jurisprudence. This jurisprudence is important because the principles developed therein will be useful when courts are required to lift the corporate veil when dealing with economic crimes such as corruption and money laundering.