Discourses on Corporate Law

Abstract

This paper concerns the history of corporate law from the commercial code of 1807 and specially the problem regarding the conception of the corporation as a legal person. It examines the passage from the idea of the Personnalite moral in the natural law scholars to the idea of the juridical personality elaborated by Savigny. Then the problem is posed regarding the question of the rights of the members and the necessary structure of the corporation to be the owner of the firm's asset. Finally the paper consider the evolution in UK and U.S. law and the perspective of a new conception based on the notion of the enterprise.