David Ciepley
Biographic Data
| ID | 264274 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Ciepley |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Ciepley |
| SIGNATURE | CIEPLEY D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Denver |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2620-0601 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 93 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Democracy and the Corporation
There is an unexamined paradox in the history of government in the West. The so-called absolutist monarchs of Europe overwhelmingly chartered republican corporations—e.g., towns, universities, and guilds whose members elected their leaders. Indeed, modern constitutional democracy is patterned after them. Yet, modern democracies themselves have overwhelmingly chartered authoritarian corporations—e.g., universities and business corporations whose s…
Member Corporations, Property Corporations, and Constitutional Rights
Historically, a corporation was regarded as an artificial creation of law possessing only what rights and powers its constituting charter confers upon it. This “concession” or “grant” theory has been eclipsed, especially in the United States, by the view that the corporation is a mere association of natural persons, and that its rights are those of its “members” and “owners,” the shareholders, who, as persons and citizens, bring even constitution…
Is the U.S. Government a Corporation? The Corporate Origins of Modern Constitutionalism
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 innova…
Anne M. Kornhauser. Debating the American State
Journal Article Anne M. Kornhauser. Debating the American State: Liberal Anxieties and the New Leviathan, 1930–1970. Get access Anne M. Kornhauser. Debating the American State: Liberal Anxieties and the New Leviathan, 1930–1970. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. 323. $59.95. David Ciepley David Ciepley The University of Denver [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The…
Neither Persons nor Associations
This article challenges the practice of extending constitutional rights to corporations. Drawing on recent corporate law scholarship, it shows that a corporation is neither an association of natural persons nor an independent person (or “real entity”) itself. The rights of natural persons thus do not pass to it. Instead, the corporation is an abstract, property-owning legal entity entirely distinct from its members that owes its very existence to…
Beyond Public and Private
This article challenges the liberal, contractual theory of the corporation and argues for replacing it with a political theory of the corporation. Corporations are government-like in their powers, and government grants them both their external "personhood" and their internal governing authority. They are thus not simply private. Yet they are privately organized and financed and therefore not simply public. Corporations transgress all the basic di…
Dispersed Constituency Democracy
In multiethnic and multi-religious democracies, the chronic danger is that candidates will engage in 'identity politics,' appealing to one locally preponderant ethnic group against other groups. The usual formulas for composing multiethnic democracies-ethnic federalism and/or proportional representation-often exacerbate the problem, ethnicizing political campaigns and carving up the national legislature into ethnic blocs, each beholden only to it…
Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism
This book argues that, more than any other factor, it was the encounter with totalitarianism that dissolved the ideals of American progressivism and crystallized the ideals of postwar liberalism. The New Deal began as a revolution in favor of progressive governance--executive-centered and expert-guided. But as David Ciepley shows, by the late 1930s, intellectuals and elites, reacting against the menace of totalitarianism, began to shrink from usi…
Authority in the firm (and the attempt to theorize it away)
The classical case for market society appeals to the complementary goods of economic liberty and maximum wealth. A market society overgrown with economic firms, however, partly sacrifices liberty for the sake of wealth. This point was accepted by prewar, theorists of the economic firm, such as Frank Knight and Ronald Coase, and the attempt to moderate, or compensate for, the constriction of economic liberty was a central struggle of the Progressi…
Why the state was dropped in the first place
Around the time of World War II, just as the American state was acquiring new levels of capacity for autonomous action, the state was dropped from American social science, as part of the reaction to the rise of totalitarianism. All traces of state autonomy, now understood as “state coercion,” were expunged from the image of American democracy. In this ideological climate, the “society‐centered” frameworks of pluralism and structural‐functionalism…
Democracy despite voter ignorance
Ilya Somin finds in the public's ignorance of policy issues a reason to reduce the size and scope of government. But one cannot restrict the range of issues that may be raised in a democracy without it ceasing to be a democracy. Jeffrey Friedman argues that, since feedback on the quality of private goods is superior to feedback on the quality of public policies, “privatizing” public decisions might improve their quality. However, the quality of f…
Beyond Public and Private
This article challenges the liberal, contractual theory of the corporation and argues for replacing it with a political theory of the corporation. Corporations are government-like in their powers, and government grants them both their external "personhood" and their internal governing authority. They are thus not simply private. Yet they are privately organized and financed and therefore not simply public. Corporations transgress all the basic di…
Why the state was dropped in the first place
Around the time of World War II, just as the American state was acquiring new levels of capacity for autonomous action, the state was dropped from American social science, as part of the reaction to the rise of totalitarianism. All traces of state autonomy, now understood as “state coercion,” were expunged from the image of American democracy. In this ideological climate, the “society‐centered” frameworks of pluralism and structural‐functionalism…
Democracy despite voter ignorance
Ilya Somin finds in the public's ignorance of policy issues a reason to reduce the size and scope of government. But one cannot restrict the range of issues that may be raised in a democracy without it ceasing to be a democracy. Jeffrey Friedman argues that, since feedback on the quality of private goods is superior to feedback on the quality of public policies, “privatizing” public decisions might improve their quality. However, the quality of f…
Dispersed Constituency Democracy
In multiethnic and multi-religious democracies, the chronic danger is that candidates will engage in 'identity politics,' appealing to one locally preponderant ethnic group against other groups. The usual formulas for composing multiethnic democracies-ethnic federalism and/or proportional representation-often exacerbate the problem, ethnicizing political campaigns and carving up the national legislature into ethnic blocs, each beholden only to it…
Is the U.S. Government a Corporation? The Corporate Origins of Modern Constitutionalism
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 innova…
Neither Persons nor Associations
This article challenges the practice of extending constitutional rights to corporations. Drawing on recent corporate law scholarship, it shows that a corporation is neither an association of natural persons nor an independent person (or “real entity”) itself. The rights of natural persons thus do not pass to it. Instead, the corporation is an abstract, property-owning legal entity entirely distinct from its members that owes its very existence to…
Authority in the firm (and the attempt to theorize it away)
The classical case for market society appeals to the complementary goods of economic liberty and maximum wealth. A market society overgrown with economic firms, however, partly sacrifices liberty for the sake of wealth. This point was accepted by prewar, theorists of the economic firm, such as Frank Knight and Ronald Coase, and the attempt to moderate, or compensate for, the constriction of economic liberty was a central struggle of the Progressi…
Member Corporations, Property Corporations, and Constitutional Rights
Historically, a corporation was regarded as an artificial creation of law possessing only what rights and powers its constituting charter confers upon it. This “concession” or “grant” theory has been eclipsed, especially in the United States, by the view that the corporation is a mere association of natural persons, and that its rights are those of its “members” and “owners,” the shareholders, who, as persons and citizens, bring even constitution…
Democracy and the Corporation
There is an unexamined paradox in the history of government in the West. The so-called absolutist monarchs of Europe overwhelmingly chartered republican corporations—e.g., towns, universities, and guilds whose members elected their leaders. Indeed, modern constitutional democracy is patterned after them. Yet, modern democracies themselves have overwhelmingly chartered authoritarian corporations—e.g., universities and business corporations whose s…
Democracy despite voter ignorance
Ilya Somin finds in the public's ignorance of policy issues a reason to reduce the size and scope of government. But one cannot restrict the range of issues that may be raised in a democracy without it ceasing to be a democracy. Jeffrey Friedman argues that, since feedback on the quality of private goods is superior to feedback on the quality of public policies, “privatizing” public decisions might improve their quality. However, the quality of f…
Why the state was dropped in the first place
Around the time of World War II, just as the American state was acquiring new levels of capacity for autonomous action, the state was dropped from American social science, as part of the reaction to the rise of totalitarianism. All traces of state autonomy, now understood as “state coercion,” were expunged from the image of American democracy. In this ideological climate, the “society‐centered” frameworks of pluralism and structural‐functionalism…
Authority in the firm (and the attempt to theorize it away)
The classical case for market society appeals to the complementary goods of economic liberty and maximum wealth. A market society overgrown with economic firms, however, partly sacrifices liberty for the sake of wealth. This point was accepted by prewar, theorists of the economic firm, such as Frank Knight and Ronald Coase, and the attempt to moderate, or compensate for, the constriction of economic liberty was a central struggle of the Progressi…
Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism
This book argues that, more than any other factor, it was the encounter with totalitarianism that dissolved the ideals of American progressivism and crystallized the ideals of postwar liberalism. The New Deal began as a revolution in favor of progressive governance--executive-centered and expert-guided. But as David Ciepley shows, by the late 1930s, intellectuals and elites, reacting against the menace of totalitarianism, began to shrink from usi…
Neither Persons nor Associations
This article challenges the practice of extending constitutional rights to corporations. Drawing on recent corporate law scholarship, it shows that a corporation is neither an association of natural persons nor an independent person (or “real entity”) itself. The rights of natural persons thus do not pass to it. Instead, the corporation is an abstract, property-owning legal entity entirely distinct from its members that owes its very existence to…
Beyond Public and Private
This article challenges the liberal, contractual theory of the corporation and argues for replacing it with a political theory of the corporation. Corporations are government-like in their powers, and government grants them both their external "personhood" and their internal governing authority. They are thus not simply private. Yet they are privately organized and financed and therefore not simply public. Corporations transgress all the basic di…
Dispersed Constituency Democracy
In multiethnic and multi-religious democracies, the chronic danger is that candidates will engage in 'identity politics,' appealing to one locally preponderant ethnic group against other groups. The usual formulas for composing multiethnic democracies-ethnic federalism and/or proportional representation-often exacerbate the problem, ethnicizing political campaigns and carving up the national legislature into ethnic blocs, each beholden only to it…
Anne M. Kornhauser. Debating the American State
Journal Article Anne M. Kornhauser. Debating the American State: Liberal Anxieties and the New Leviathan, 1930–1970. Get access Anne M. Kornhauser. Debating the American State: Liberal Anxieties and the New Leviathan, 1930–1970. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. 323. $59.95. David Ciepley David Ciepley The University of Denver [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The…
Member Corporations, Property Corporations, and Constitutional Rights
Historically, a corporation was regarded as an artificial creation of law possessing only what rights and powers its constituting charter confers upon it. This “concession” or “grant” theory has been eclipsed, especially in the United States, by the view that the corporation is a mere association of natural persons, and that its rights are those of its “members” and “owners,” the shareholders, who, as persons and citizens, bring even constitution…
Is the U.S. Government a Corporation? The Corporate Origins of Modern Constitutionalism
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 innova…
Democracy and the Corporation
There is an unexamined paradox in the history of government in the West. The so-called absolutist monarchs of Europe overwhelmingly chartered republican corporations—e.g., towns, universities, and guilds whose members elected their leaders. Indeed, modern constitutional democracy is patterned after them. Yet, modern democracies themselves have overwhelmingly chartered authoritarian corporations—e.g., universities and business corporations whose s…
Law (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Corporation (5 works) · Democracy (5 works) · Economics (5 works) · Law and economics (5 works) · Public Administration (5 works)