The Essential Elements of Corporate Law
Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper No. 20/2009
Yale Law, Economics & Public Policy Research Paper No. 387
Harvard Law and Economics Research Paper No. 643
Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 09-39
European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) - Law Working Paper No. 134/2009
37 Pages Posted: 21 Jul 2009 Last revised: 10 Dec 2018
Abstract
This article is the first chapter of the second edition of The Anatomy of Corporate Law: A Comparative and Functional Approach, by Reinier Kraakman, John Armour, Paul Davies, Luca Enriques, Henry Hansmann, Gerard Hertig, Klaus Hopt, Hideki Kanda and Edward Rock (Oxford University Press, 2009). The book as a whole provides a functional analysis of corporate (or company) law in Europe, the U.S., and Japan. Its organization reflects the structure of corporate law across all jurisdictions, while individual chapters explore the diversity of jurisdictional approaches to the common problems of corporate law. In its second edition, the book has been significantly revised and expanded.
As the book's introductory chapter, this article describes the functions and boundaries of corporate law. We first detail the economic importance of the corporate form's hallmark features: legal personality, limited liability, transferable shares, delegated management, and investor ownership. We then identify the major agency problems that attend the corporate form, and that, therefore, corporate law must address: conflicts between managers and shareholders, between controlling and minority shareholders, and between shareholders as a class and non-shareholder constituencies of the firm such as creditors and employees. In our view, corporate law serves in part to accommodate contract and property law to the corporate form and, in substantial part, to address the agency problems that are associated with this form. We next consider the role of law in structuring corporate affairs so as to achieve these goals: whether, and to what extent standard forms - as opposed, on the one hand, to private contract, and on the other, to mandatory rules - are needed, and the role of regulatory competition. Whilst the ‘core’ features of corporate law are present in all - or almost all - legal systems, different systems have made different choices regarding the form and content of many other aspects of their corporate laws. To assist in explaining these, we review a range of forces that shape the development of corporate law, including domestic share ownership patterns. These forces operate differently across countries, implying that in some cases, complementary differences in corporate laws are functional. However, other such differences may be better explained as a response to purely distributional concerns.
In addition to Chapter 1, Chapter 2 of the Anatomy of Corporate Law (2nd ed.), Agency problems, Legal Strategies, and Enforcement is also available (full text) on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1436555.
Keywords: Corporation, agency problem, corporate law, corporate regulation, corporate governance, securities law, limited liability, regulatory competition, mandatory rules, comparative corporate law, evolution of corporate law
JEL Classification: D23, G32, G34, G38, K22, M14
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation