Book Review: Contractarians, Communitarians and Agnostics

21 Pages Posted: 22 Oct 2010

See all articles by Alan E. Garfield

Alan E. Garfield

Widener University - Delaware Law School

Date Written: 1995

Abstract

This is a review of the Special Issue on the Corporate Stakeholder Debate: The Classical Theory and Its Critics, 43 AM. J. COMP. L. 150 (1995). While I find all of the contributions to the symposium thoughtful and provocative, I ultimately found the arguments weakened by their lack of empirical support. For so many of the questions posed in the symposium, the empirical data needed to furnish answers was either absent or conflicting. This deficiency left the articles seeming artificial: elegant theories floating without an anchor. I finished the symposium neither a converted contractarian nor communitarian, but an agnostic – feeling confident that, if nothing else, there is simply too much we don’t know, and that the choice in the stakeholder debate is less about which theory is right, and more about which values one brings to the debate.

Keywords: corporation law, corporate stakeholder

JEL Classification: K22

Suggested Citation

Garfield, Alan E., Book Review: Contractarians, Communitarians and Agnostics (1995). American Journal of Comparative Law, Vol. 43, 1995, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1694198

Alan E. Garfield (Contact Author)

Widener University - Delaware Law School ( email )

4601 Concord Pike
Wilmington, DE 19803-0406
United States

HOME PAGE: http://law.widener.edu

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