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The Contractual Foundation Of Family-Business Law, Benjamin Means

Faculty Publications

Most U.S. businesses are family owned, and yet the law governing business organizations does not account adequately for family relationships. Nor have legal scholars paid sufficient attention to family businesses. Instead, legal scholars operate within a contractarian model of business organization law, which holds that a firm is comprised of a nexus of contracts among economically rational actors. Intimate relationships appear irrelevant except insofar as they affect contractual choices. Indeed, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as family-business law.

This Article lays the foundation for a law of family business by expanding the contractarian model: a firm includes not …