The Transatlantic Origins of the Business Trust

The trust form may have afforded transaction planners all the incidents of so-called ‘corporateness' prior to the enactment of general incorporation statutes, but in England the Companies Acts hindered the development of the business trust, and in the United States, the inability of the common law to distinguish adequately between partnerships and trusts made its use uncertain. Whereas the common law in England charted a complicated path to circumvent prohibitions in the Companies Acts, undoing confusion in American common law, which relied on English precedent, required legislative intervention. This narrative complicates interpretations of the state's role in the development of organizational law. The state could help to break down intellectual barriers impeding the progress of the common law as much as the common law could seek out ways in which to circumvent the strictures of state-imposed regulation

Common law · Confusion · Database transaction · Intervention (counseling · Legislature · Narrative · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science · State law · Statute · Undoing · Law · Legal principles and applications