Cornell Law Review Volume 50 Article 3 Issue 4 Summer 1965 Why Are Business Corporation Laws Largely Enabling Elvin R. Latty Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Elvin R. Latty, Why Are Business Corporation Laws Largely Enabling , 50 Cornell L. Rev. 599 (1965) Available at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol50/iss4/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Cornell Law Review by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. WHY ARE BUSINESS CORPORATION LAWS LARGELY "ENABLING"? Elvin R. Lattyt Professor Wilber G. Katz was unquestionably correct when, a few years ago, he viewed the modern business corporation acts as being ba- sically "enabling" in the underlying philosophy of their general structure and of most of their specific provisions.' Nothing has happened in the intervening years to change the picture. He classified the manifested phi- losophies as: first, those that are "enabling" in the sense that they are characterized by freedom of choice in who among the interested parties takes what in the way of risks, control, and profit; second, those that are still enabling but are supplemented with certain requirements to keep the basic decisions of the interested parties more in line with idealized no- tions of contract, tort, and fiduciary relations; third, those that reflect a "paternal responsibility" theory; and, fourth, those that reflect a "social responsibility" theory.