James S. Coleman (1)

This is a short essay about a basic fact of modern life: corporations, states and registered societies can be persons in the eyes of the law. The author argues that this is problematic because these entities have so much more power than human persons as individuals do. He makes a couple of good points especially about information asymmetry: when individuals interact with large collectives, the individual generally has to act with very little knowledge of how the collective operates. He also suggests a few moderately interesting changes to the laws by which corporations are governed. However, in the end I could not really make out what the problem was supposed to be. I think it would probably have been a good idea to approach it from some other vantage point than the one which the author selected, because legal personhood also has positive consequences which seem quite indisputable. It evens the playing field between individuals and large collectives by allowing individuals to take legal action against collectives, even against the state. Assuming that the courts are independent of the collective, I don't think the invididual is always so powerless as the author writes.… (mehr)