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On the evolution of corporate forms

In English

Författare

Summary, in English

The major theme underlying this symposium is the development and growth of many new forms of business associations over the last few decades. These new forms are characterized by a combination of personal freedom from partner/owner liability and far-reaching freedom of contract for partner/owners. The question thus becomes whether this development of new business associations amounts to an extension of limited liability to partnerships or an extension of freedom of contract to corporations. Leading scholars Henry Hansmann, Reinier Kraakman, and Richard Squire have posited that the latter theory prevails. Specifically, these scholars discuss the concepts of "entity shielding"- i.e., how, and to what extent, a firm's assets may be separated, or be kept separate, from the partners/owners' creditors-and "owner shielding"- i.e., how, and to what extent, a partner/owner's assets may be separated, or be kept separate, from the firm's creditors. According to Hansmann et al., entity shielding is logically prior to owner shielding; thus, new forms of business associations have developed through an extension of freedom of contract to corporations. Hansmann et al. believe that this understanding of the evolution of business associations possesses predictive value for future developments in business association law. Professor Samuelsson refers to Hansmann et al.'s entity-shielding-prior-to-owner-shielding theory as the "priority thesis" and claims that it is an empirical rather than logical statement. To test that thesis, he traces the legal development of business associations in Europe and Sweden and concludes that those histories do not support Hansmann et al.'s priority thesis and that there are no regularities in the historical evolution of association law that provide predictive value for the future of association law.

Publiceringsår

2005

Språk

Engelska

Sidor

15-29

Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie

University of Illinois Law Review

Issue

1

Dokumenttyp

Artikel i tidskrift

Förlag

University of Illinois

Ämne

  • Law

Status

Published

Forskningsgrupp

  • Lund University Centre for Business Law (Swedish abbr: ACLU)

ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt

  • ISSN: 0276-9948