This volume offers a new point of entry into questions about how the law conceives of states and firms. Because states and firms are fictitious constructs rather than products of evolutionary biology, the law dictates which acts should be attributed to each entity, and by which actors. Those legal decisions construct firms and states by attributing identity and consequences to them. As the volume shows, these legal decisions are often products of path dependence or conceptual metaphors like “personhood” that have expanded beyond their original uses. Focusing on attribution, the volume considers an array of questions about artificial entities that are usually divided into doctrinal siloes. These include questions about attribution of international legal responsibility to states and state-owned entities, transnational attribution of liabilities to firms, and attribution of identity rights to corporations. Durkee highlights the artificiality of doctrines that construct firms and states, and therefore their susceptibility to change.
Introduction; 1. States, Firms, and their Legal Fictions Melissa J. Durkee; Part I. International Attribution: 2. Attribution in International Law: Challenges and Evolution Kristen E. Boon; 3. Between States and Firms: Attribution and the Construction of the Shareholder State Mikko Rajavuori; 4. Contractors and Hybrid Warfare: A Pluralist Approach to Reforming the Law of State Responsibility Laura Dickinson; 5. The Enduring Charter: Corporations, States, and International Law Doreen Lustig; Part II. Transnational Attribution: 6. Corporate Structures and the Attribution Dilemma in Multinational Enterprises James T. Gathii and Olabisi D. Akinkugbe; 7. Transnational Blame Attribution: The Limits of Using Reputational Sanctions to Punish Corporate Misconduct Kishanthi Parella; 8. Mind the Agency Gap in Corporate Social Responsibility Dalia Palombo; Part III. Domestic Attribution: 9. To Whom Should We Attribute A Corporation's Speech? Sarah C. Haan; 10. What is a Corporate Mind? Mental State Attribution Benjamin P. Edwards; 11. Who is a Corporation? Attributing the Moral Might of the Corporate Form Catherine A. Hardee; Part IV. Conceptual Origins and Lineages: 12. The Juridical Person of the State: Origins and Implications David Ciepley; 13. Corporate Personhood as Legal and Literary Fiction Joshua Barkan.
Melissa J. Durkee is Professor at Washington University School of Law. She is an expert in international and business law and her research focuses on the public-private interactions that produce and interpret legal norms. She is an elected member of the American Journal of International Law and chairs the International Legal Theory interest group of the American Society of International Law. Her work appears in leading journals including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and others.
