Abstract
Ever since the rise of the great corporations in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, commenters have debated whether firms should be run
solely to benefit investors, or whether instead they should be run to benefit
society as a whole. Both sides have claimed their preferred policies are
necessary to maintain a capitalist system of private enterprise distinct from
state institutions. What we can learn from the current iteration of the debate—
now rebranded as “environmental, social, governance” or “ESG” investing—
is that efforts to disentangle corporate governance from the regulatory state
are futile; governmental regulation has an inevitable role in structuring the
corporate form.
Repository Citation
Ann M. Lipton,
Boden Lecture: Of Chameleons and ESG,
107 Marq. L. Rev. 597
(2024).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol107/iss3/3
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