Separation is at the heart of corporate law and practice. Corporations separate shareholders from their money by partitioning assets, dividing ownership from control, and filtering investment through institutional intermediaries. On the conventional view, these forms of corporate separation are ethically regrettable, because they undermine shareholders’ motivation and capacity to take responsibility for how companies use their money. This Article challenges the conventional view and defends the claim that separating shareholders from their corporate investments promotes the value of pluralism in a diverse modern economy. It also makes the case that as new technological developments continue to erase the boundaries between social and economic spheres, corporate separation is now more important than ever.
Monday, July 3, 2023