The Multinational Challenge to Corporation Law : The Search for a New Corporate Personality

Traditional corporation law formulated centuries ago by an agricultural society fails to deal effectively with modern society in which business is being predominantly conducted by affiliated corporations doing business around the world. Rejecting the traditional law that would treat each affiliated company as a separate and distinct legal entity unrelated to the group of which it is an integral part, American law, and to a lesser extent European law, is responding with new decisional and statutory law focusing on the enterprise rather than on its constituent parts. The application of legal controls to multinational enterprises has a further major dimension. National law regulating world business inevitably leads to serious international controversies over the boundaries of national jurisdiction and regulation. Multinationals challenge not only national law but the world legal order as well. This volume comprehensively reviews the newer system of enterprise law being developed by the legal systems of the world to deal with the modern corporations and its implications for international law and foreign relations law. It concludes with the very first discussion of the jurisprudential implications of this major legal development.

Traditional corporation law formulated centuries ago by an agricultural society fails to deal effectively with modern society in which business is being predominantly conducted by affiliated corporations doing business around the world. Rejecting the traditional law that would treat each affiliated company as a separate and distinct legal entity unrelated to the group of which it is an integral part, American law, and to a lesser extent European law, is responding with new decisional and statutory law focusing on the enterprise rather than on its constituent parts. The application of legal controls to multinational enterprises has a further major dimension. National law regulating world business inevitably leads to serious international controversies over the boundaries of national jurisdiction and regulation. Multinationals challenge not only national law but the world legal order as well. This volume comprehensively reviews the newer system of enterprise law being developed by the legal systems of the world to deal with the modern corporations and its implications for international law and foreign relations law. It concludes with the very first discussion of the jurisprudential implications of this major legal development.