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Is the U.S. Government a Corporation? The Corporate Origins of Modern Constitutionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2017

DAVID CIEPLEY
DAVID CIEPLEY*
Affiliation:
The University of Denver
*
David Ciepley is Associate Professor of Political Science, The University of Denver, Sturm Hall 466, 2000 E. Asbury Ave., Denver, CO 80208 (ciepley@alumni.princeton.edu).
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Abstract

The U.S. Constitution is best understood not as a “social contract,” but as a popularly issued corporate charter. The earliest American colonies were literal corporations of the Crown and, like all corporations, were ruled by limited governments established by their charters. From this, Americans derived their understanding of what a constitution is—the written charter of a sovereign that ordains and limits a government. The key Federalist innovation was to substitute the People for the King as the chartering sovereign. This effectively transferred the “governance technology” of the corporation to the civil government—including the practice of delegating authority via a written charter, charter amendment, and judicial review. Federalists used these corporate practices to frame a government that united seeming irreconcilables—a government energetic yet limited, republican yet mixed, popular yet antipopulist—yielding a corporate solution to the problem of arbitrary rule. Leading founders considered this new government a literal chartered corporation of the People.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 111 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 418 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2017 

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Footnotes

The author gratefully acknowledges helpful comments from Danielle Allen, Eldon Eisenach, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, Alin Fumurescu, Robert Hockett, Turkuler Isiksel, Hélène Landemore, Jacob Levy, Samuel Mansell, Jan-Werner Mueller, Miguel Padro, Philip Pettit, Elizabeth Pollman, Aziz Rana, Robert Reich, Steven Shiffrin, Quentin Skinner, Philip Stern, Anna Stilz, Lynn Stout, and the members of the Cornell Law School faculty workshop and Stanford University political theory workshop, as well as from the APSR editorial team and the journal's excellent anonymous reviewers. Generous research support was provided by the American Council of Learned Societies, Princeton's University Center for Human Values, and the Institute for Advanced Study.

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