Beyond trust: why American classical jurists and economists could not love the corporation

Nicola Giocoli

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2023, vol. 30, issue 3, 369-394

Abstract: Given the unconditional favour that scholars imbued with classical ideas should bestow on any manifestation of business freedom and entrepreneurial spirit, it was not a given that classical jurists and economists would join the ranks of those who in the late 19th century complained about the corporatisation of the American economy. The usual explanation is that they did so out of doctrinal and practical concerns for the effect of the associated rise of monopolies and trusts. A complementary account exists, however, offered by law historians and based on the doctrinal controversies about the true nature of corporations triggered by the famous Santa Clara decision (1886) of the US Supreme Court. The paper casts new light on the latter account by uncovering those aspects of classical economics that made it impossible for its supporters – economists and jurists alike – to unreservedly support the corporate form before and beyond the trust problem.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09672567.2023.2190599 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:30:y:2023:i:3:p:369-394

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REJH20

DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2023.2190599

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought is currently edited by José Luís Cardoso

More articles in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().