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Corporate Proxies, Leonard H. Axe

Michigan Law Review

The earlier forms of corporations in England seem to have been political units and the normal mode of conferring corporate rights was by an issue of a charter from the crown, whereby a body of individuals was designated a corporation with the sovereign power to exercise appropriate privileges. Since the charter was issued by the crown, the corporation was considered a part of the government and each member of the corporation was entitled to one vote if given by him in person. As one writer has so well stated, this "was the result of a political philosophy which assumed that …