Free About 1 hr0 learners Rev. 2026-10-28 0

In 2017 a river in New Zealand became a legal person, with guardians who can speak for it in court. That sounds strange until you remember that the company that made your phone is a legal person too, and the idea is centuries older than anyone alive. The corporation may be the law's most successful invention: a device that let strangers pool their savings, build railways and vaccines, and outlast every one of its founders.

The same device can grow strong enough to bend markets and governments, and to drain the shared things nobody owns, from fishing grounds to the open web. Taking both of those facts seriously is the work here, with the best arguments of market defenders and critics side by side. A merger in the news, a ruling on company speech or a quarrel over an app store then turns out to be part of one long argument about what institutions are for, and citizens get a say in how it ends.

Levels

  1. 1 1. What a Corporation Is 5-question quiz
  2. 2 2. From Royal Charters to General Incorporation 5-question quiz
  3. 3 3. Corporate Personhood 5-question quiz
  4. 4 4. Whose Company Is It? 5-question quiz
  5. 5 5. What Markets and Firms Do Well 5-question quiz
  6. 6 6. The Commons 5-question quiz
  7. 7 7. Monopoly and Antitrust 5-question quiz
  8. 8 8. Platforms and the Digital Commons 5-question quiz

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