Two Fallacies About Corporations

18 Pages Posted: 9 Jan 2025

See all articles by Philip N. Pettit

Philip N. Pettit

Princeton University; Australian National University (ANU) - Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS)

Date Written: August 01, 2015

Abstract

One of the most important challenges for political theory is to identify the extent to which corporations should be facilitated and restricted in law. By way of background to that challenge, we need to develop a view about the nature and the potential of corporations and indeed of corporate bodies in general. This chapter discusses two fallacies that we should avoid in this exercise. One, a claim popular among economists, that corporate bodies are not really agents at all. The other, a claim associated with US jurisprudence, that not only are they agents, they are persons whose rights call in the same way as the rights of individual persons for legal recognition and protection.

Keywords: corporations, corporate governance, trust, power, corporate agency, group agency, corporate rights, corporate persons

Suggested Citation

Pettit, Philip N., Two Fallacies About Corporations
(August 01, 2015). https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198744283.003.0027, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5084557 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5084557

Philip N. Pettit (Contact Author)

Princeton University ( email )

305 Marx Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544-1012
United States
609-258-4759 (Phone)
609-258-1110 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.princeton.edu/~ppettit/

Australian National University (ANU) - Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS) ( email )

Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200
Australia

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