UofL LAW: "Faculty Blogs: Employees as Corporate Stakeholders and Minimum Labor Standards"
I enjoyed the Brandeis quote from Ariana Levinson's faculty blog post at "Faculty Blogs: Employees as Corporate Stakeholders and Minimum Labor Standards". She details to law review articles worth reading by those in the labor and employment law fields.
The premise of the first, Kent Greenfields' Reclaiming Corporate Law in a New Gilded Age, is that "[t]he time has come to reclaim corporate law as a topic of wide debate and progressive concern." He argues that "while corporations should be appreciated for their special ability to create wealth, they should also be treated warily, given the form and power bestowed on them."
He quotes Justice Brandeis,
The prevalence of the corporation in America has led men of this generation . . . to accept the evils attendant upon the free and unrestricted use of the corporate mechanism as if these evils were the inescapable price of civilized life and, hence, to be borne with resignation. Throughout the greater part of our history a different view prevailed. Although the value of this instrumentality in commerce and industry was fully recognized, incorporation for business was commonly denied long after it had been freely granted for religious, educational and charitable purposes. It was denied because of fear. Fear of encroachment upon the liberties and opportunities of the individual. Fear of the subjection of labor to capital. Fear of monopoly. Fear that the absorption of capital by corporations, and their perpetual life, might bring evils . . . . There was a sense of some insidious menace inherent in large aggregations of capital, particularly when held by corporations.
Liggett v. Lee, 288 U.S. 517, 548 (1933) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
