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1769 King George III grants a
charter to Dartmouth College.
1776 In
The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith suggestes
shareholders who do not
run their own business' but delegate that task to
professional managers were
making an economic mistake.
Adam Smith felt
professional managers could not be trusted
to apply the same "anxious vigilance" to manage "other people's money" as they
would their own and "negligence and profusion therefore must prevail, more or
less, in the management of such an incorporation."
1816 Legislature of New Hampshire
alters Dartmouth College charter placing appointment positions in the hands of
the governor, adding new members to the board of trustees, and creating a state
board of visitors with veto power over trustee decisions.
1819 Supreme Court rules in favor of the Dartmouth College
charter and invalidates the act of the New Hampshire Legislature, which in turn
allows Dartmouth to continue as a private institution and take back its
buildings, seal, and charter.
The majority
opinion, written by John Marshall, reaffirms
the sanctity of a
contract.
In the words of Chief Justice Marshall in the famous
Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward case, corporations are
"artifcial being[s], invisible, intangible, and existing only at the intention
of the law."
A corporation is a "creature of the law" that
does not possess
inalienable human rights, but rather "only those properties which the
charter of creation confer on it."
Corporations could be extensively
regulated to ensure that they did not abuse the special privileges and
protections governments conferred on them not shared by individuals.
The
Supreme Court rules that the corporate charter of Dartmoth College qualifies as
a contract between private parties, the King and the trustees, with which the
legislature could not interfere.
The contract is valid because the US
Constitution said that a state could not pass laws to impair a
contract.
Chief Justice Marshall's
opinion emphasized that the term "contract" referred to
transactions involving
individual property rights, not to "the political relations between the
government and its citizens."
This was the
settled understanding both
prior to and after the Civil
War when the Fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution, requiring
states to respect the fundamental rights of all Americans.
1844 In Louisville, C. & C.R. Co. v. Letson, 2 How.
497, 558, 11 L.Ed. 353, the US Supreme Court holds that for the purposes of the
case at hand, a corporation is "capable of being treated as a citizen of [the
State which created it], as much as a natural person."
1854 Reaffirmed the result of Letson, though on the somewhat
different theory that "those who use the corporate name, and exercise the
faculties conferred by it," should be presumed conclusively to be citizens of
the corporation's State of incorporation. Marshall v. Baltimore & Ohio
R. Co., 16 How. 314, 329, 14 L.Ed. 953
1886 Santa Clara v.
Southern Pacific Railroad Co
Supreme Court never
reaches an opinion in the case and it dies.
The court reporter,
a former railroad man,
inserts the opinion notes of the oral argument of Chief Justice Waite into his
published notes.
This appears to be an announcement that corporations
are "persons" within the meaning of Fourteenth Amendment.
1911 "Corporation, n.
An ingenious device for
obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility." - Ambrose
Bierce Devil's Dictionary
September 11, 2001
SEC offices are
destroyed in the World Trade
Center.
"The SEC has not quantified the number of active cases in
which substantial files were destroyed.
Reuters and the
Los Angeles Times
published reports estimating them at 3,000 to 4,000.
They include the
agency's major inquiry into the manner in which
investment banks
divvied up hot shares of initial public offerings during the high-tech boom." -
Margaret Cronin Fisk
2002 to 2007
US
Justice Department wins 1,236 convictions in
corporate fraud
cases.
2004 The wealthiest 1% of American
citizens own 36.9% of all stock. 30% of stock is enough to fully control most
corporations.
2007 Warren Buffet states he feels
no imperative to invest in socially responsible corporations or to press those
corporations in which he invested to be socially responsible.
January 21, 2010 Quest for
corporate personhood completed.
Corporations can now make unlimited,
direct political contributions.
"The
decision of the Supreme
Court in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission paves the
way for unlimited corporate and union spending in elections, thus drowning out
of the average citizen's voice in our public policy debates." - Bob Edgar
01/22/10
Paths Citizens United Created for Foreign Money to Pour Into US
Elections
Corporate social responsibility
is illegal.
Corporate social
responsibility is an oxymoron.
A corporation, by definition of corporate law, is
singularly
self-interested.
The "best interests of the corporation" priciple, a
fixture of corporate law, compels
corporate decision
makers always to act in
the best interests of the corporation and its shareholders.
The law forbids any other motivation for actions, whether
to assist workers, improve the environment, or help consumers save money.
Corporate officers can give away their own money, as private citizens
but as corporate officials, however, stewards of other people's money, they
have no legal authority to
pursue such goals as ends in themselves - only as means to serve the corporate
interests - to maximize the
wealth of shareholders.
"The corporate design contained in hundreds
of corporate laws across the face of the Earth is nearly identical.
The people who run corporations have a
legal duty to shareholders, and that duty is to make money.
Failing
this duty can leave directors and officers open to being sued by
shareholders (non-voting
shares may have an arbitration
clause).
The law dictates to the corporation to
pursue of its own
self-interest - and equates corporate self-interest with
shareholder
self-interest.
No
mention is made of responsibility to the public interest.
Corporate
law thus casts ethical and
social concerns as irrelevant, or as
stumbling blocks to the
corporation's fundamental
mandate." - Robert Hinkley, corporate lawyer |
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