The Public Service Origins of the American Business Corporation

1978 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald E. Seavoy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Public Utility ◽  
American Business ◽  
Business Corporation ◽  
The Public ◽  
General Welfare

The corporate charter, so restricted in its use in England, found a constantly broadening range of applications in America from the colonial period onward. The test of importance to the general welfare, originally confined to municipal, benevolent, or at most public-utility enterprises, was being applied to manufacturing ventures by the second decade of the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Of Bodies Politic and Pecuniary: A Brief History of Corporate Purpose

2020 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
David Guenther
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
American Business ◽  
Business Corporation ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Early American ◽  
Bright Line ◽  
History Of

American corporate law has long drawn a bright line between for-profit and non-profit corporations. In recent years, hybrid or social enterprises have increasingly put this bright-line distinction to the test. This Article asks what we can learn about the purpose of the American business corporation by examining its history and development in the United States in its formative period from roughly 1780-1860. This brief history of corporate purpose suggests that the duty to maximize profits in the for-profit corporation is a relatively recent development. Historically, the American business corporation grew out of an earlier form of corporation that was neither for-profit nor nonprofit in today’s parlance but rather, served a multitude of municipal, religious, charitable, educational, and eventually business purposes in early nineteenth-century New England. The purposes of early American business corporations—rather than maximization of profit to private shareholders— were often overtly public, involving development of local transportation, finance, and other much-needed economic infrastructure. With the rise of factory-based manufacturing, railroads, and other capital-intensive industries in the middle decades of the nineteenth century and the advent of general incorporation statutes, the purpose of the American business corporation shifted fundamentally from public to private. By 1860, the stage was set for the modern firm. This Article concludes that the corporation has no intrinsic purpose. The corporation’s defining features are separate legal personality and the ability to aggregate capital toward any otherwise lawful end, whether for-profit or nonprofit. Social enterprises today more closely resemble the early American business corporation than the profit-maximizing modern firm. Social enterprise should be seen less as a legally uncertain novelty than a return to the business corporation’s nineteenth-century American roots. Finally, this Article suggests potential limitations for social enterprise.

Bengali Women’s Writings in the Colonial Period: Critique of Nation, Narration, and Patriarchy

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Sanchayita Paul Chakraborty ◽  
Dhritiman Chakraborty
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Women Writers ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Women's Agency ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indian Tradition ◽  
Women’S Agency ◽  
Spiritual Commitment

Abstract Critical engagements like the first autobiography written by a Bengali woman, Rasasundari Devi, and the non-fictions by Kailashbasini Devi, Krishnabhabini Das, and other women writers in the second half of the nineteenth century contested the imagined idealization of the Hindu domesticity and conjugality as spaces of loveableness and spiritual commitment. They criticized coercion in child-marriages and the forceful injunctions of the Hindu scriptures on both married and widowed women. Such rhetoric of quasi empowerment needs to be disaggregated to perpetuate issues of ‘double colonization,’ ‘dual-hold’ in feminism in India. The question is whether there can be any grounds of women’s agency in the Indian tradition. Eurocentric critiques are ill-equipped to politicize all modalities of a culture of social exclusion in Hindu imaginaries. Henceforth, as questions of equality, emancipation, and empowerment are fiercely debated in the public domain in contemporary India, we need to argue how immanent dissenting woman subjectivity can originate to counteract multiple patriarchies formed in Indian immediacies.

An Analysis of the Provision of Local Public Utility Services by Way of Illustration of Two Slovenian Municipalities

10.4335/82 ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-219
Author(s):  
Božo Grafenauer
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Public Utility ◽  
Public Utilities ◽  
Public Enterprise ◽  
Public Enterprises ◽  
The Public ◽  
Local Public Services ◽  
Legal Foundations ◽  
Utility Services

Among the tasks performed by the Slovenian municipalities to meet the needs of individual residents there is also the provision of local public services. A municipality provides the performance of the public services determined by the municipality itself, and the performance of the public services established by law (local public services). The legal foundations for the regulation and operation of public utility services are given primarily in the Local Self-Government Act and in the Public Utilities Act, as well as in sector-specific laws for individual services. The overview of public utility services and the modes of their performance in two urban municipalities indicate that in Slovenian municipalities, public utility services are performed primarily in two ways: in public enterprises and by awarding a public service concession. KEYWORDS: • local public services • public service delivery • municipality • concession • public enterprise • Slovenia

I'm Not Watching I'm Waiting: the Construction of Visual Codes about Womens' Role as Spectators in the Trial in Nineteenth Century England

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Mulcahy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
Productive Labour ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Many

AbstractAccounts of the interface between law, gender and modernity have tended to stress the many ways in which women experienced the metropolis differently from men in the nineteenth century. Considerable attention has been paid to the notion of separate spheres and to the ways in which the public realm came to be closely associated with the masculine worlds of productive labour, politics, law and public service. Much art of the period draws our attention to the symbiotic relationship between representations of gender and prevailing notions of their place. Drawing on well known depictions of women onlookers in the trial in fine art, this essay by Linda Mulcahy explores the ways in which this genre contributed to the disciplining of women in the public sphere and encouraged them to go no further than the margins of the law court.

scholarly journals Certain regulatory and efficiency issues of public utility companies in Budapest

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-24
Author(s):  
Csaba Lentner ◽  
Vasa László ◽  
Molnár Petronella
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Public Utility ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Service Companies ◽  
Utility Companies ◽  
And Control

Capital cities of the world are usually characterized by a concentration of the majority of the population and most of the public administration and economic life. Therefore, the efficiency and quality of public service delivery in their administrative territories make a difference. The study examines public service companies in Budapest, Hungary’s capital, with the focus on their sectors of activity to describe their system, which may provide good foundations for a prospective international comparison.This study explores sector-oriented reports of state- and municipally-owned public utility companies providing services within the administrative territory of Budapest and evaluates them in terms of total assets, finance, profitability and efficiency. The study looked for an answer to the question of how the tighter state regulation and control adopted after 2010 affected their management, and what influence the price regulation of consumer public utility charges, imposed since 2013, had on companies’ activities.

scholarly journals PENERAPAN KEBIJAKAN DISKRESI DALAM KAITANNYA DENGAN TINDAK PIDANA KORUPSI

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 404
Author(s):  
Ervien Rizky Aditya
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
General Welfare ◽  
State Administration ◽  
The Government ◽  
Executive Body

Government in carrying out its duties is equipped with the authority of both the attributive and the delegative. With the development of society, there are often certain urgent circumstances, in which Government Officials/Administration Bodies can not use their authority which is bound to take legal action. In realizing the goal as a state with the concept of welfare general (welfare state) then the government must play an active role in interfacing the field of social economic life of the community. The government delegated responsibility bestuurszorg or public service. With this discretionary authority it means that some of the powers held by the legislature are transferred into the administration of the state as the executive body. Because the state administration has solved the problem by not waiting for the amendment of the Law from the legislative field, so the government should not refuse to provide services to the public on the grounds that there is no or no clear rule of law as long as it is still the authority of the government. But the power of government as a discretionary policy maker is always faced with a problem connected with corruption. Pemerintah dalam menjalankan tugasnya dilengkapi dengan kewenangan-kewenangan baik yang bersifat atributif maupun yang bersifat delegatif. Dengan adanya perkembangan masyarakat maka seringkali terdapat keadaan-keadaan tertentu yang sifatnya mendesak, dimana Pejabat/Badan Administrasi pemerintahan tidak dapat menggunakan kewenangannya yang bersifat terikat dalam melakukan tindakan hukum. Dalam mewujudkan tujuan sebagai negara dengan konsep kesejahteraan umum maka pemerintah harus berperan aktif mencampuri bidang kehidupan sosial ekonomi masyarakat. Maka pemerintah dilimpahkan tanggung jawab sebagai pelayan publik atau public service. Dengan adanya kewenangan diskresi ini berarti bahwa sebagian kekuasaan yang dipegang oleh badan pembentuk Undang-Undang dipindahkan ke dalam administrasi negara sebagai badan eksekutif. Karena administrasi negara melakukan penyelesaian masalah dengan tidak menunggu perubahan Undang-Undang dari bidang legislatif, sehingga pemerintah tidak boleh menolak memberikan pelayanan kepada masyarakat dengan alasan tidak ada atau tidak jelasnya aturan hukum sepanjang masih menjadi kewenangan dari pemerintah. Namun kekuasaan pemerintah sebagai pembuat kebijakan diskresi selalu berhadapan dengan adanya suatu permasalahan yang dihubungkan dengan tindak pidana korupsi.

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