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Full-Text Articles in Law
Culture In Corporate Law Or: A Black Corporation, A Christian Corporation, And A Māori Corporation Walk Into A Bar . . ., Gwendolyn Gordon
Culture In Corporate Law Or: A Black Corporation, A Christian Corporation, And A Māori Corporation Walk Into A Bar . . ., Gwendolyn Gordon
Seattle University Law Review
Recent Supreme Court cases have entrenched a new image of corporate civic identity, assigning to the corporate person rights and abilities based upon the cultural characteristics, social ties, civic commitments, and internal lives of the human beings involved in it. This vision of the corporation is exemplified in recent cases implicating a corporate right to engage in political speech (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) and a right of corporations to be free of government interference regarding religious convictions (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.). Although much is being written about the soundness of the results in these cases and …
Notes On The Difficulty Of Studying The Corporation, Marina Welker
Notes On The Difficulty Of Studying The Corporation, Marina Welker
Seattle University Law Review
In the award-winning documentary The Corporation, public intellectuals and activists characterize corporations as “externalizing machines,” “doom machines,” “persons with no moral conscience,” and “monsters trying to devour as much profit as possible at anyone’s expense.” In other footage, people on the street personify corporations: “General Electric: a kind old man with lots of stories;” “Nike: young, energetic;” “Microsoft: aggressive;” “McDonald’s: young, outgoing, enthusiastic;” “Monsanto: immaculately dressed;” “Disney: goofy;” “The Body Shop: deceptive.” The documentary, like screenwriter and legal scholar Joel Bakan’s book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, imparts dissonant messages about corporations. On the one hand, …
Hired To Invent Vs. Work Made For Hire: Resolving The Inconsistency Among Rights Of Corporate Personhood, Authorship, And Inventorship, Sean M. O'Connor
Hired To Invent Vs. Work Made For Hire: Resolving The Inconsistency Among Rights Of Corporate Personhood, Authorship, And Inventorship, Sean M. O'Connor
Seattle University Law Review
Corporations have long held core aspects of legal personhood, such as rights to own and divest property and to sue and be sued. U.S. copyright law allows corporations to be authors while U.S. patent law does not allow them to be inventors. To be sure, both copyright law and patent law allow corporations to own copyrights and patents as assignees. But only copyright law, through its work-made-for-hire doctrine, provides for the nonnatural person of the corporation to “be” the author in an almost metaphysical sense. Under patent law, the natural-person inventors must always be listed in the patent documents, even …
Law And Legal Theory In The History Of Corporate Responsibility: Corporate Personhood, Lyman Johnson
Law And Legal Theory In The History Of Corporate Responsibility: Corporate Personhood, Lyman Johnson
Seattle University Law Review
This Article, the first of a multipart project, addresses the nature of corporate personhood, one area where law has played a central role in the history of corporate responsibility in the United States.1 The treatment will be illustrative, not exhaustive. Consistent with the theme of the larger project, the Article serves to make the simple but important point that a full historical understanding of corporate responsibility requires an appreciation of the law’s significant, if ultimately limited, contribution to the longstanding American quest for more responsible corporate conduct. On one hand, the spheres of law and corporate responsibility, although clearly complementary, …