At a time when the standing and status of corporations is much in the news, this study of the early modern history of the concept of the corporation is particularly timely. Henry S. Turner provides a new account of early modern political institutions and political concepts by turning to the history of the corporation as a type of notional person and as a way of organizing collective life. Universities, guilds, towns and cities, religious confraternities, joint-stock companies: all were legal corporations, and all enjoyed rights and freedoms that sometimes exceeded the authority of the State. Drawing on the resources of economic and colonial history, literary criticism, law, political philosophy, and the history of science, Turner reads works by Thomas More, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes, among many others, to find the resources for a new account of corporations as fictional bodies and persons endowed with identities, rights, and the capacity for action. Turner tackles a number of fascinating questions: How did early modern writers make sense of the paradoxical essence of the corporationa collectivity at once imaginary and material, coherent but unbounded, many and at the same time one? And what can the history of the corporation tell us about the history of our own moment, when public goods are increasingly privatized and citizens seek new models of association and meaningful political action? His answers will be of compelling interest to historians, political theorists, literary scholars, and others."

The Corporate Commonwealth traces the evolution of corporations during the English Renaissance and explores the many types of corporations that once flourished. Along the way, the book offers important insights into our own definitions of fiction, politics, and value. Henry S. Turner uses the resources of economic and political history, literary analysis, and political philosophy to demonstrate how a number of English institutions with corporate associations—including universities, guilds, towns and cities, and religious groups—were gradually narrowed to the commercial, for-profit corporation we know today, and how the joint-stock corporation, in turn, became both a template for the modern state and a political force that the state could no longer contain. Through innovative readings of works by Thomas More, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes, among others, Turner tracks the corporation from the courts to the stage, from commonwealth to colony, and from the object of utopian fiction to the subject of tragic violence. A provocative look at the corporation’s peculiar character as both an institution and a person, The Corporate Commonwealth uses the past to suggest ways in which today’s corporations might be refashioned into a source of progressive and collective public action.

Corporate governance initiatives have been developing at a rapid pace in the Commonwealth Caribbean through legislation, case law and codes. Commonwealth Caribbean Corporate Governance offers an overview of current practice and legal developments in corporate governance, highlighting the interpretation of the legislation through case law and the codes of corporate governance which have now been implemented. It also considers the challenges which emerging markets face in an attempt to adopt the corporate governance initiatives of developed markets. This text explores the emergence and development of corporate governance in the region from a range of angles, including the protection and empowerment of shareholders, the impact on government agencies, and the role and responsibilities of directors and officers in companies and in government agencies. Written by a panel of academics, legal practitioners and experts working in business, this book will be an invaluable resource for judges, lawyers, corporate executives and students of business, corporate law and corporate management.

AT&T's divestiture was the largest corporate reorganization in history and has had international repercussions. It was a major development in American economic policy, and a prominent part of the deregulation movement of the late 1970s. This study reveals the internal decision-making process at AT&T and explains how private and public interests combined to shape corporate and public policy in late 20th-century America. Temin weaves the strands of politics, economics, business, and law into an accessible narrative history that will be of interest to the general reader who wants to know about government business interaction and how it affects American citizens. Temin portrays divestiture as a great experiment in public policy, competition, openness, and international policy. He concludes that the experiment has been a mix of deliberate design and uncontrollable forces whose outcome was not foreseen.

In the last twenty five years, company law in the Commonwealth Caribbean has undergone dramatic changes, from a model influenced by English law to a new, harmonised collection of regional legislation based on the Caricom and CLI model Acts that vary substantially across Caricom member states. The variation within Caribbean company law presents an enormous challenge, both in terms of the breadth of the subject and in addressing the difference in provisions of one state’s Company Law Act as opposed to another. Using the Caricom model Act and CLI model Act as a basis for its structure, Commonwealth Caribbean Company Law examines and compares regional implementation of company law in an accessible and comprehensive manner that will be invaluable to students and practitioners in the region.

This book is a compendium of contributions from accomplished authors, which examines how Commonwealth member states have achieved a degree of consensus in developing and promoting standards of corporate governance both in the public and the private sectors and how they are tackling the problem of corruption.

The ‘Man Bites Dog’ story of over 1,000 high net-worth individuals who rose up to protest the repeal of the estate tax made headlines everywhere last year. Central to the organization of what Newsweek tagged the ‘billionaire backlash’ were two visionaries: Bill Gates, Sr., cochair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest foundation on earth, and Chuck Collins, cofounder of United for a Fair Economy and Responsible Wealth, and the great-grandson of meat packer Oscar Mayer who gave away his substantial inheritance at the age of twenty-six. Gates and Collins argue that individual wealth is a product not only of hard work and smart choices but of the society that provides the fertile soil for success. They don‘t subscribe to the ‘Great Man’ theory of wealth creation but contend that society‘s investments, such as economic development, education, health care, and property rights protection, all contribute to any individual‘s good fortune. With the repeal proposed by the Bush administration, we might be facing the future that Teddy Roosevelt feared—where huge fortunes amassed and untaxed would evolve into a dangerous and permanent aristocracy. Repeal would drop federal revenues $294 billion in the first 10 years; 27 some $750 billion would be lost in the second decade, not to mention that the U.S. Treasury estimates that charitable contributions would drop by $6 billion a year. But what about all those modest families that would lose the farm? Gates and Collins expose the fallacy of this argument, pointing out that this is largely a myth and that the very same lobbies and politicians who are crying ‘cows’ have opposed other legislation that would actually have helped small farmers. Weaving in personal narratives, history, and plenty of solid economic sense, Gates and Collins make a sound and compelling case for tax reform, not repeal.

"The author's guidance is backed up by research and hundreds of interviews - information that everyone in business can use: senior executives get the tools to create and sustain effective boards; management gets a clear understanding of good corporate governance; directors get essential information on how to optimize their roles; employees get an accurate reading on the health of their company; and investors get a critical benchmark for evaluating a company."--BOOK JACKET.

Commonwealth Caribbean Business Law breaks away from the traditional English approach of treating business law primarily as the law of contract and agency. The book takes a panoramic view of the foundation of various legal systems with a subsequent examination of different areas of legal liability that may affect business activities. These areas include contract law, agency, tort law, criminal law, and internet law as significant challenges confronting the business sector. The book primarily targets the development of business law in several Caribbean Commonwealth jurisdictions but also, where appropriate, embraces the jurisprudence of other Commonwealth nations such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. With respect to internet law, the proliferation of judicial pronouncements emerging from the United States provided the platform for the only non-Commonwealth treatment of a topic. The approach of the book is to use excerpts from judgments so as to allow students, particularly the non-legal student, to understand legal principles as espoused by the judiciary without the filtering bias of authors.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision marked a culminating victory for the bizarre doctrine that corporations are people with free speech and other rights. Now, Americans cannot stop corporations from spending billions of dollars to dominate elections and keep our elected representatives on a tight leash. Jeffrey Clements reveals the far-reaching effects of this strange and destructive idea, which flies in the face of not only all common sense but most of American legal history as well. Most importantly, he offers solutions—including a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United—and tools to help readers join a grassroots drive to implement them. Ending corporate control of our Constitution and government is not about a triumph of one political ideology over another—it’s about restoring the republican principles of American democracy.