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What Was The "Dartmouth College" Case Really About?, Charles R.T. O'Kelley

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article is the first modern work of corporation law scholarship fully examining the Dartmouth College case as it was lived and understood at the time. Earlier scholars, the author of this Article included, have relied on the case to make doctrinal and theory-of-the firm arguments about Supreme Court precedents regarding the constitutional rights of corporations. Moreover, these earlier works have primarily focused on, and found talismanic meaning, in two sentences in Marshall’s opinion:

"A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties …

The Problems Of Yesteryear -- Commerce And Due Process, Robert L. Stern

Vanderbilt Law Review

Less than fifteen years ago, there were constitutional problems important enough to stir the country, to threaten the sanctity of the Supreme Court. These were the culmination of at least three decades of judicial controversy, in which the pressure of events brought criticism of the Court's decisions, both in noteworthy dissenting opinions and outside, to a new height. Fifteen years later, there still are difficult and important constitutional problems, and there still is criticism of the Supreme Court's decisions--though on a relatively minor scale. But the issues which rocked more than the legal world in the 1930's and in the …