Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Development of Corporate Personhood Law In Comparative Perspective, 1886-2014

随着公司资本主义的兴起和第一批大企业的建立，美国法学家和学者一直在努力解决如何为美国法律的目的界定公司地位的问题。 争论的主要问题涉及公司应在多大程度上被视为与人相似;是一个自然实体，其权利可与公司所有人的权利分开。到了20世纪20年代末，随着“现实主义”观点的崛起，这场争论基本上消失了，这种观点认为法律的术语基本上是空洞的能指。近年来，公司人格再次成为公众讨论的话题。最近，最高法院重新审视了公司权利的适当范围问题：公司实体应在何时以及在何种基础上参与政治言论并享有公民享有的保护。 本研究所要解决的问题是，公司人格的法律的学说的遗产在回答这些问题以及在更广泛地制定美国公司监管方面发挥了什么作用（如果有的话）？为什么公司人格在美国法律中扮演这样的角色？为了解决这些问题，研究人员采用混合方法来分析1886-2014年间公司法人法的发展。首先，研究者通过法律的引证来追溯人格原则的历史发展。这使他们能够确定人格理论被运用的时期、案例、法院和法律的舞台。第二，研究者使用美国和英国之间的比较历史分析来解释为什么公司人格原则特别吸引美国法学家。研究人员使用档案材料来评估经济、政治、制度和文化驱动法律的发展的相对影响。该项目的总体目标是发展公司法发展的文化理论。

With the rise of corporate capitalism and the establishment of the first great enterprises, American jurists and scholars struggled with the question of how to define the status of the corporation for the purposes of American law. The main point of contention concerned the degree to which the corporation should be considered as similar to a person; a natural entity with rights that could be separated from those of the corporation's owners. By the end of the 1920s, the debate had largely dissipated with the ascendance of a "realist" view that cast legal terms as largely empty signifiers. In recent years, corporate personhood has once again become a topic of public debate. Recently the Supreme Court re-visited the question of the proper scope for corporate rights: when and upon what basis should corporate entities engage in political speech and enjoy protections that citizens enjoy. The questions this research address are, what role (if any) did the legacy of the legal doctrine of corporate personhood play answering these questions, and in crafting American corporate regulation more broadly? And why has corporate personhood come to play this role in American law? To address these questions, the researchers undertake a mixed-method approach to analyze the development of corporate personhood law between 1886-2014. First, the researchers trace the historical development of the personhood doctrine through the web of legal citations. This allows them to identity the periods, cases, courts, and legal arenas where the personhood doctrine was deployed. Second, the researchers use a comparative historical analysis between the United States and England to explain why the doctrine of corporate personhood was especially appealing to American jurists. The researchers use archival material to assess the relative influence of economic, political, institutional, and cultural drivers of legal development. The overall goal of the project is to develop a cultural theory of the development of corporate law.