1 - The Nature and Purpose of the Corporation in Law

Summary

This chapter is concerned with understanding the limited liability corporation, the dominant form of conducting business today. First, I consider the relationship between the corporation and the individuals underlying it and argue that this is best captured by a ‘supervenience relation’: the corporation is not reducible to but dependent upon the individuals underlying it. Secondly, I consider the very purpose of forming a corporate entity and argue for a ‘socio-liberal conception of the corporation’. This view understands the corporation as a structure designed to harness the expression of individual economic interests for social benefits. Both the wider social purpose and individual profit-seeking motives are necessary to understand the complex duality that is the modern corporation. These reflections on the nature and purpose of the corporate form – as will be seen later in this book - are of vital importance to explicating the obligations such entities have that flow from fundamental rights.