[EL] Too Brave for the "Home of the Brave"?

[Susan Lerner]

Doesn 't this line of argument overlook some basic elements of corporation law? It seems to me that people use the corporate organizational form not to overcome collective action problems, but to take advantage of the privilege of limited personal liability and other legal privileges granted by law in setting up this special entity. If it's just collective action, you don't need to bother incorporating (oh, the burden of that paperwork!),you can form an association or let the entity be a partnership.  But because corporations are granted special privileges by their creator - the Legislature - they have special attributes not available to the rest of us.. There are perfectly good reasons why we as a society might want to create this specialized entity and grant it special status and privileges, but with those privileges should come obligations and controls.

There is another distinction which perhaps I missed being raised, which is how humans behave with their own money and with money which belongs to others. It may well be that the individuals associated with a corporation are reluctant to use their own $ in contributing to a PAC, while there is no similar reluctance in using corporate treasury $ of a profitable corporation.. Corporate $ has the advantage of belonging to the faceless mass of shareholders and is thus easier to spend.. .  
Susan Lerner
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry, Please excuse any typos. Susan Lerner, Common Cause/NY 917-670-5670

-----Original Message-----
From: "Smith, Brad" <BSmith at law.capital.edu>
Sender: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
Date: Tue, 1 May 2012 20:42:15 
To: Joseph Birkenstock<jbirkenstock at capdale.com>; JBoppjr at aol.com<JBoppjr at aol.com>; wmaurer at ij.org<wmaurer at ij.org>; Trevor Potter<tpotter at capdale.com>
Cc: law-election at uci.edu<law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] Too Brave for the "Home of the Brave"?

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