An idea at the centre of recent debates about corporate purpose and governance is the apparently intuitive notion that shareholders own corporations. Though misaligned with academic legal opinion, this notion is rooted in common sense and as such is often used, explicitly or implicitly, to close down discussions about the position of shareholders as regards other stakeholders and the social role of business corporations. The chapter analyses the power and persuasiveness of this common-sensical position through the lens of discourse analysis, aided by concepts drawn from pragma-linguistics and sociology. It shows how common sense can be shaped by primary definers in strategic action fields to promote ideological precepts, such as, in this case, the ideology of shareholder primacy. To understand how the field of corporate control is structured and how it has evolved, what is needed is a deeper investigation into how common sense is produced, shaped, and curated over time.

A significant percentage of listed companies are under the influence of founding families by stock ownership and/or family managers, even in developed countries, including the United States. In the United States, when the founders retire, they tend to hire professional managers and sell out their shares. In Japan, approximately 50% of listed companies are family firms, many of which are managed by founders’ heirs without substantial family ownership. In China, although family firms are relatively new because Chinese law traditionally prohibited private enterprises, family firms have grown rapidly since the transformation from a planned to a market-oriented economy in 1978. Generally speaking, founder firms’ performance is significantly better than that of non-family firms in most countries, but heir-managing firms’ performance varies in different countries. Prevalent types of listed family firms and their relative performance to non-family firms reflect minority shareholder protection law, the size of the manager market, and the corporate governance practice of each country.

Chapter 5 considers the legal definition of ownership and possession and how they were acquired and protected. Possession was important in that someone who had physical control of something, for example, a farm, could use the land and enjoy its fruits even though the property was formally owned by another. Having possession of an object brought significant benefits since it was an important step to proving and acquiring ownership by usucapio (that is, having it in your possession for at least two years in the case of immovables, one year for movables). The acquisition and distribution of land was part of the history of the republic, and the management of land, the designation of boundaries, the establishment of jurisdiction, and the resolution of disputes through the legal process remained important. We then consider the role of law in arranging farm tenancy and negotiating leases, and the position of urban landlords and tenants.

Using the library of eighteenth-century attorney and legal historian Frances Hargrave as a starting point, this chapter considers the place of law, property, and state formation in the causes and results of the American Revolution. Focusing on three related themes to the place of laws in independence – the influence and break from English legal culture, the pluralism of legal practice within North America, and the place of legal institutions in either maintaining or changing the status quo – this chapter considers how both different forms of property and the different individuals and communities involved with it played a central role in the creation of an independent United States. The governments that emerged from the Revolution each relied heavily on these varied legal threads.

Chapter 5 seeks to identify the normative foundations of a property theory of ownership and custody of cultural objects. It begins by examining the case study of the current legislative, administrative, and judicial framework in Italy, which aims to grant cultural institutions an essentially eternal right to control the reproduction and use of images of their cultural holdings. It then addresses the redefinition of a “museum” adopted in 2022 by the International Council of Museums and the implications this may have for the role of cultural institutions. The chapter then seeks to delineate the contours of a property theory of cultural objects and the corresponding sets of in rem rights and in rem duties that should apply to cultural institutions as both proprietors and custodians, by reconsidering the role of “placeness” of cultural institutions and their collections. In particular, a theory of ownership and custody of cultural objects held by cultural institutions should refer to the link between culture and space in considering the mirror-image questions that have been at the center of legal, professional, and public attention, namely: does a cultural institution have an in rem right to appropriate the value components of cultural objects, such as by limiting or prohibiting others from using or reproducing images of items in its collection; and, conversely, does a cultural institution have an in rem duty, as a custodian of culture, to actively make accessible to the public images and other information on items in its collections?

Chapter 4 reassesses Hegel’s views on property and its role within a rational state. In the Philosophy of Right’s initial stage, devoted to ‘abstract right’, each person is defined as an independent legal agent, with the right to own and exchange property. From this standpoint, the political sphere is but a prolongation of the legal sphere and the state is reduced to an external authority, charged with regulating existing property relations. As the progression unfolds, however, this legalistic framework is called into question: it turns out that individual rights are not the true foundation of the state, but a part thereof, subordinated to a wider commitment to the common good. Yet while this commitment is clearly affirmed by Hegel, it is at odds with the priority he accords to private property, in the progression’s later stages, over other forms of ownership. Taking a different path, the chapter argues that a Hegelian theory of property entails a critical revision of Hegel’s actual treatment of property rights. If the state is to bring together the citizens’ particular interests and the common good, the ownership of society’s productive resources must be shared by all of its members.

Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend lectures are contemporaneous to his Groundwork, which first sketches some key features of his Critical moral philosophy. Evidence of Kant’s Groundwork stands out when his lectures are compared to Achenwall’s Prolegomena and to Kant’s assigned text, Achenwall’s Ius naturae. Kant’s own Critical Rechtslehre, including his theory of property, develops much later, yet these lectures reveal several of Kant’s key issues and problems, his profound disagreements with traditional and contemporaneous natural law, some of his critical resources for radically improving philosophy of law. This chapter focuses on how Kant’s Critical issues and innovations pertain to individual rights to property.

Speech act theorists take a gift to be among the range of things we can do with words. They also disagree regarding the extent of the participation of the giftee in the act. Can a gift be made unbeknownst to its recipient? If not, is the latter required to accept the gift, in addition to hearing and understanding the utterance through which it is made? Because they give their insights about gifts in passing, speech act theorists also leave important aspects of the act in the dark. They hint at the power of gifts to modify the deontic status of its two parties, but leave to one’s guess the details of the related changes. The aim of the chapter is to reflect further on these quandaries and neglected sides of gifts in light of Reinach’s theory of social acts. The main result of the present Reinachian inquiry is that the puzzles raised by the illocutionary act of making gifts dissolve once attention is redirected from the thing that is gifted to the ownership over that thing.

Hohfeld’s and Reinach’s ontologies of rights have rarely been compared. After having highlighted the similarities between them, the focus is on what is arguably their most fundamental disagreement. Hohfeld assumes from the outset that all rights are relations, and consequently claims that all liberties have correlatives, which he calls, for lack of a better term, “no-rights”. Reinach, for his part, maintains that liberties, unlike claims, essentially lack correlatives and counterparts, which is why he calls them “absolute rights”. Who is right? Do liberties have correlatives or not? It is argued that both Reinach and Hohfeld have overgeneralized an initially correct insight. Reinach is right, pace Hohfeld, that some liberties are absolute, but wrong that all are. Hohfeld is right, pace Reinach, that some liberties have no-rights as correlatives, but wrong that all liberties have such correlatives. A reconciled ontology of rights is proposed that makes room for both absolute and relative liberties.

This chapter provides a detailed examination of condominium ownership in China, focusing on the unique legal framework that governs this form of property. The chapter begins by highlighting the significance of condominiums in China’s housing market, driven by high homeownership rates and rapid urban development. It outlines the three fundamental elements of condominium ownership: individual ownership of a unit, joint ownership of common areas and membership in a Homeowner Association (HOA). It discusses the complexities of parking space allocation – a common source of disputes – and the regulations that address these issues.

The role and management structure of HOAs are thoroughly explored, including their functions, rights and the democratic processes for decision-making and electing committee members. The chapter also examines the legal obligations regarding maintenance funds and the involvement of local governments in supporting HOAs. Finally, the chapter addresses the participation quota, which determines the proportionate share of common expenses and voting rights among unit owners, ensuring fair and equitable management of condominium properties.

This chapter examines the specificities at work at the international level and their implications for the issue of legitimacy, concentrating on the contemporary context. These specificities have to be understood in relation to the notion and experience of the international community. There are five distinctive features that characterize the international level in connection with the sense of international community. Although the interactions of these characteristics make the international system what it is, this chapter addresses them individually to identify clearly their nature and respective significance for international legitimacy. These features include the ambiguity of the international community; the national bent of international life; cultural diversity and disparity of development; the hegemonic and yet fragmented and contested conception and exercise of power; and the extent to which actors (states and individuals, in particular) have the possibility of ownership—that is, of being represented and of participating at the international level, including in terms of consent.

This chapter sets out the debates that have grown up around CEOs, highlighting three major reasons why they warrant serious study: their importance to the companies they lead, their wider economic and political power, and what their careers tell us about social mobility. To address these debates the book explores three questions: Who were the CEOs and how did they get into the role? What did they do? Did they matter for their companies and Britain’s economy and society? To answer these questions, a unique database of the CEOs of the top 100 most valuable UK public companies between 1900 and 2009 has been assembled. This consists of 475 companies and 1,397 CEOs. For each CEO a career biography is created. To analyse the data, we draw on Upper Echelons Theory and Agency Theory, alongside historical scholarship to understand the environments in which they operated. The chapter then sets out the five analytical threads that are developed throughout the book. The chapter closes by discussing how the nomenclature around top corporate officers evolved from ‘chairman’ to ‘managing director’ to ‘chief executive officer’.