The Origins of Corporations
The Origins of Corporations

Author: Germain Sicard

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-01-01

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 0300156480

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Fully modern corporations appeared in fourteenth-century Toulouse, much earlier than previously believed Germain Sicard proves that Europe's first corporations were fourteenth-century mill companies operating in Toulouse, rather than seventeenth-century English and Dutch trading companies as commonly believed. He shows that the corporate form derives from a unique ownership contract from Medieval Europe called pariage, and a culture of strong property rights and municipal self-governance. Based on archival research, Sicard's 1952 thesis has been translated into English with an introduction that places the work in the context of new institutional economics and legal theory. It is an important contribution to research on the history and legal origins of the corporation.

Wildcat Currency
Wildcat Currency

Author: Edward Castronova

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2014-06-03

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0300186134

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Edward Castronova, the premier expert in the field, offers a fascinating look at unregulated virtual currencies from ThankYou Points to Bitcoin, exploring their legal and political ramifications and how they will change the global economy forever.

Corporations Are People Too
Corporations Are People Too

Author: Kent Greenfield

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2018-10-23

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0300240805

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Why we’re better off treating corporations as people under the law—and making them behave like citizens Are corporations people? The U.S. Supreme Court launched a heated debate when it ruled in Citizens United that corporations can claim the same free speech rights as humans. Should corporations be able to claim rights of free speech, religious conscience, and due process? Kent Greenfield provides an answer: Sometimes. With an analysis sure to challenge the assumptions of both progressives and conservatives, Greenfield explores corporations' claims to constitutional rights and the foundational conflicts about their obligations in society. He argues that a blanket opposition to corporate personhood is misguided, since it is consistent with both the purpose of corporations and the Constitution itself that corporations can claim rights at least some of the time. The problem with Citizens United is not that corporations have a right to speak, but for whom they speak. The solution is not to end corporate personhood but to require corporations to act more like citizens.

Ambivalence, a Love Story
Ambivalence, a Love Story

Author: John Donatich

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 031232653X

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This thinking man's meditation on marriage and its discontents is an eloquentexploration of the temperament of modern manhood.

Educated in Tyranny
Educated in Tyranny

Author: Maurie D. McInnis

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2019-08-13

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 081394287X

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From the University of Virginia’s very inception, slavery was deeply woven into its fabric. Enslaved people first helped to construct and then later lived in the Academical Village; they raised and prepared food, washed clothes, cleaned privies, and chopped wood. They maintained the buildings, cleaned classrooms, and served as personal servants to faculty and students. At any given time, there were typically more than one hundred enslaved people residing alongside the students, faculty, and their families. The central paradox at the heart of UVA is also that of the nation: What does it mean to have a public university established to preserve democratic rights that is likewise founded and maintained on the stolen labor of others? In Educated in Tyranny, Maurie McInnis, Louis Nelson, and a group of contributing authors tell the largely unknown story of slavery at the University of Virginia. While UVA has long been celebrated as fulfilling Jefferson’s desire to educate citizens to lead and govern, McInnis and Nelson document the burgeoning political rift over slavery as Jefferson tried to protect southern men from anti-slavery ideas in northern institutions. In uncovering this history, Educated in Tyranny changes how we see the university during its first fifty years and understand its history hereafter.

Better Business
Better Business

Author: Christopher Marquis

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-09-13

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 030024715X

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A compelling look at the B Corp movement and why socially and environmentally responsible companies are vital for everyone’s future Businesses have a big role to play in a capitalist society. They can tip the scales toward the benefit of the few, with toxic side effects for all, or they can guide us toward better, more equitable long-term solutions. Christopher Marquis tells the story of the rise of a new corporate form—the B Corporation. Founded by a group of friends who met at Stanford, these companies undergo a rigorous certification process, overseen by the B Lab, and commit to putting social benefits, the rights of workers, community impact, and environmental stewardship on equal footing with financial shareholders. Informed by over a decade of research and animated by interviews with the movement’s founders and leading figures, Marquis’s book explores the rapid growth of companies choosing to certify as B Corps, both in the United States and internationally, and explains why the future of B Corporations is vital for us all.

Spy Capitalism
Spy Capitalism

Author: Jonathan E. Lewis

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 030012905X

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What happens when the world of venture capital collides with the world of espionage? To find the answer, Jonathan E. Lewis takes us inside the executive suite at Itek Corporation during the Cold War years from 1957 to 1965. Itek was manufacturing the world’s most sophisticated satellite reconnaissance cameras, and the information these cameras provided about Soviet missiles and military activity was critical to U.S. security. So was Itek. This intriguing book examines in unprecedented detail the challenges Itek faced not only as a contractor for the most important national security program of the time—the CIA’s Project CORONA spy satellite—but also as a start-up company competing with established industrial giants. In telling the story of Itek Corporation, Lewis fills important gaps in the history of American intelligence, business history, and management studies. In addition, he addresses a variety of important themes such as the compatibility of secrecy and capitalism, the struggle between profits and patriotism, and the workings of power and connections in America. Lewis explores how Itek executives contended with myriad business problems that were compounded by the need to raise capital without revealing the complete truth about the company’s highly secret business. He also presents for the first time information about Laurance Rockefeller’s venture capital operations and his role in financing Itek, based on the financier’s private Itek papers. The book is both a remarkable case study of a company at the heart of the American intelligence-industrial complex during the Cold War and a thought-provoking examination of the impact of the CIA on the capitalist system it was created to defend.

History of the Yale Law School
History of the Yale Law School

Author: Anthony T. Kronman

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0300128762

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The entity that became the Yale Law School started life early in the nineteenth century as a proprietary school, operated as a sideline by a couple of New Haven lawyers. The New Haven school affiliated with Yale in the 1820s, but it remained so frail that in 1845 and again in 1869 the University seriously considered closing it down. From these humble origins, the Yale Law School went on to become the most influential of American law schools. In the later nineteenth century the School instigated the multidisciplinary approach to law that has subsequently won nearly universal acceptance. In the 1930s the Yale Law School became the center of the jurisprudential movement known as legal realism, which has ever since shaped American law. In the second half of the twentieth century Yale brought the study of constitutional and international law to prominence, overcoming the emphasis on private law that had dominated American law schools. By the end of the twentieth century, Yale was widely acknowledged as the nation’s leading law school. The essays in this collection trace these notable developments. They originated as a lecture series convened to commemorate the tercentenary of Yale University. A distinguished group of scholars assembled to explore the history of the School from the earliest days down to modern times. This volume preserves the highly readable format of the original lectures, supported with full scholarly citations. Contributors to this volume are Robert W. Gordon, Laura Kalman, John H. Langbein, Gaddis Smith, and Robert Stevens, with an introduction by Anthony T. Kronman.

Responsible Parties
Responsible Parties

Author: Frances Rosenbluth

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2018-10-02

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0300241054

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How popular democracy has paradoxically eroded trust in political systems worldwide, and how to restore confidence in democratic politics In recent decades, democracies across the world have adopted measures to increase popular involvement in political decisions. Parties have turned to primaries and local caucuses to select candidates; ballot initiatives and referenda allow citizens to enact laws directly; many places now use proportional representation, encouraging smaller, more specific parties rather than two dominant ones.Yet voters keep getting angrier.There is a steady erosion of trust in politicians, parties, and democratic institutions, culminating most recently in major populist victories in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. Frances Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro argue that devolving power to the grass roots is part of the problem. Efforts to decentralize political decision-making have made governments and especially political parties less effective and less able to address constituents’ long-term interests. They argue that to restore confidence in governance, we must restructure our political systems to restore power to the core institution of representative democracy: the political party.