Would corporations exist without a state to grant them a charter? Do you think private courts would recognize the “legal person-hood” these businesses currently claim?
I think strict, personal liability would obtain in a private law society - groups of individuals acting together as a corporate entity would simply fall under “conspiracy” for tort purposes. There would certainly be large businesses, probably organized largely along the lines of modern corporations, including issuing of stock.
Clayton -
Any business transaction requires two parties. The court would recognize whatever terms were mutually agreed upon in the contract.
Would non-decision making stockholders be held liable for the business’ actions?
How far do you carry this though? If I buy some Campbell’s soup, am I implicitly legitimizing the corporate entity?
are these ‘business actions’ separated from the actions of real embodied human beings ('human action’s)… i.e. the people who are in fact liable?
I’m trying to understand who would be considered liable. Just the CEO? The whole board of directors? The employees? The stockholders? The customers?
there must be a crime, there must be a victim, a case needs to be made that a particular person is guilty of the crime against the victim. you seem to be trying to determine liability ‘concretely’ but simultaneously in the ‘abstract’. a bizarre prospect. what do you think the CEO did? what did the whole board of directors do? what did the employee do? what did the stockholders do? what did the customer do?
If it was a conspiracy of many, would they all be considered liable? Take the current Toyota situation for example, sans the “corporate personhood”. Who would be responsible for those deaths?
we will probably never find out given the shoddy legal systems. sad isn’t it?
I would certainly think so. Unless Cambell’s soup is engaged in some deliberate tactics to deceive you or defraud you.
Say it was under an ancap arbitration company.
what are the facts of the case?
What if shoddy canning practices produced soup with botulism, which they sold without knowing it was poison. Would this be considered intentional malice?
If the answer was known ahead of time, we wouldn’t need courts, now would we?
The questions you raise are not unique to a private law society, but to any law society.
Assuming both that there is no state and no all powerful church then no, it doesn’t seem that there should be any reason for the courts to invent such a privilege.
The Romans had corporation-like legal entities, but I don’t know how the practice came into being. I do know that the the Catholic doctrine of Mortmain is derived from Roman law, and that both the “modern” immortal state and the corporation evolved from Mortmain.
No, state legislation is necessary to establish separate entities different from any actual person. Without this modern big businesses could not exist due to exorbitant transaction costs of contracts.
Possibly. If the company incurs debts and the creditor has voluntarily agreed to limited liability then the stockholders obviously would not be liable. But in the case of a tort the stockholders would if the company as a whole is liable. Here you have to be careful because modern tort law assigns liability in ways that courts in an anarchic society would not. Suppose for example a company truck driver rear-ends another car. In an anarchic society that would probably be the exclusive liability of the driver. In fact he would probably be liable for the damage to both vehicles. In our legal system it would usually be the company’s liability.
Kinsella has written on this topic a few times. Try Corporations and Limited Liability for Torts.