The Vision

The modern business corporation emerged as the first institutional claimant of significant unregulated power since the nation state established its title in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
—Abe Chayes [1]

Abe Chayes, a former Kennedy administration official and long-time Harvard Law professor, wrote those words at the outset of what might be thought of as America’s own “Thirty Glorious Years” — that three-decade span from the late seventies through 2008 when it seemed possible that private enterprise could operate on a global stage, free from the constraints of governmental regulation and oversight. The vision was simple and stirring, and in many ways irresistible: Corporate efficiency could co-exist with democracy.

Writing in the Stanford Law Review, another professor, David Engel, [2] precisely articulated the standards to which corporations would need to subscribe in order to legitimate this unregulated power within a democratic society:

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