Washington and Lee University School of Law Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons Scholarly Articles Faculty Scholarship 2012 Law and Legal Theory in the History of Corporate Responsibility: Corporate Personhood Lyman P.Q. Johnson Washington and Lee University School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlufac Part of the Business Organizations Law Commons Recommended Citation Lyman P.Q. Johnson, Law and Legal Theory in the History of Corporate Responsibility: Corporate Personhood, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 1135 (2012). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scholarly Articles by an authorized administrator of Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Law and Legal Theory in the History of Corporate Responsibility: Corporate Personhood Lyman Johnson* I. INTRODUCTION This Article, the first of a multipart project, addresses the nature of corporate personhood, one area where law has played a central role in the history of corporate responsibility in the United States.1 The treatment will be illustrative, not exhaustive. Consistent with the theme of the larg- er project, the Article serves to make the simple but important point that a full historical understanding of corporate responsibility requires an ap- preciation of the law’s significant, if ultimately limited, contribution to the longstanding American quest for more responsible corporate conduct. On one hand, the spheres of law and corporate responsibility, although clearly complementary, might be seen as distinct, in both theory and practice.