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English Corporate Legal History, 1558-1640

Posted: 31 Jan 2013 11:39 AM PST

Ron Harris, Tel Aviv University Buchmann Faculty of Law, has published Could the Crown Credibly Commit to Respecting its Charters? England, 1558-1640. Here is the abstract.

This chapter offers a twofold shift in the application of the 'credible commitment' concept laid down by North and Weingast in their classic 1989 article. It examines the concept in the context of charter-granting, rather than in that of the national debt and the government bond market, and applies the concept to the pre-Civil War period, rather than the post-Glorious Revolution period. The chapter focuses on charters for the incorporation of business corporations.

At a basic level the puzzle is: if the state could not credibly commit to enforce or not to annual charters why were incorporators willing to pay for the charters and accompanying privileges? The chapter examines multiple mechanisms that could have succeeded in solving the commitment problem: reputation, type of charter activity and its organizational form, the law and judiciary, the extent of parliamentary or common law restraint on the sovereign and interest groups organizing to discourage default. Four case studies demonstrate how each of these mechanisms functioned. This chapter shows the usefulness of the 'credible commitment' framework. A nascent rule of law, unavailable elsewhere in Europe, explains the widespread use of charters and corporations in late Tudor and early Stuart England.Download the chapter from SSRN at the link.

"Take Your Stinking Paws Off Me...!

Posted: 31 Jan 2013 10:34 AM PST

Jonas-Sebastien Beaudry, University of Oxford, has published Of Apes and Men as Oxford Student Legal Studies Paper No. 01/2013. Here is the abstract.

Speciesism is generally taken to refer to the arbitrary preference for one's own species and cast in a morally negative light. My contention is that there are various kinds of speciesism and that it is sometimes morally acceptable. To make this point, I will focus on the 1968 movie The Planet of The Apes which offers instructive examples to test our intuitions on the matter.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.