Rehabilitating Concession Theory

37 Pages Posted: 3 May 2013 Last revised: 10 Nov 2013

Date Written: August 7, 2013

Abstract

In Citizens United v. FEC, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court ruled that, “the Government cannot restrict political speech based on the speaker's corporate identity.” The decision remains controversial, with many arguing that the Court effectively overturned over 100 years of precedent. I have previously argued that this decision turned on competing conceptions of the corporation, with the majority adopting a contractarian view while the dissent advanced a state concession view. However, the majority was silent on the issue of corporate theory, and the dissent went so far as to expressly disavow any role for corporate theory at all. At least as far as the dissent is concerned, this avoidance of corporate theory may have been motivated at least in part by the fact that concession theory has been marginalized to the point where anyone advancing it as a serious theory risks mockery at the hands of some of the most esteemed experts in corporate law. For example, one highly-regarded commentator criticized the dissent by saying: “It has been over half-a-century since corporate legal theory, of any political or economic stripe, took the concession theory seriously.” In this Essay I consider whether this marginalization of concession theory is justified. I conclude that the reports of concession theory’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, and that there remains a serious role for the theory in discussions concerning the place of corporations in society. This is important because without a vibrant concession theory we are primarily left with aggregate theory and real entity theory, two theories of the corporation that both defer to private ordering over government regulation.

This is the third update of an earlier SSRN draft, with only minor changes being incorporated in this version.

Keywords: First Amendment, Citizens United, Corporate Theory

JEL Classification: K00, K10, K22

Suggested Citation

Padfield, Stefan J., Rehabilitating Concession Theory (August 7, 2013). Oklahoma Law Review, Forthcoming, U of Akron Legal Studies Research Paper No. 12-13, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2259831

Stefan J. Padfield (Contact Author)

University of Akron School of Law ( email )

150 University Ave.
Akron, OH 44325-2901
United States

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