Title: The Corporate Lawyer's Role in a Contemporary Democracy
Abstract: The study of the effect that corporations have on society, including the sometimes negative impact of certain corporate activities, is not novel. As early as the 1930s, Adolph Berle and Edwin Merrick Dodd debated the idea that a business might wish to aspire to a higher goal than simply to turn a profit. Berle took the position that a corporation owes only a duty to the shareholders to maximize wealth, and Dodd suggested that the corporation should serve a social purpose as well.1 Dodd’s side of this debate has evolved into a concept known as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Sometimes, when people refer to CSR, they are speaking of a broad responsibility that a corporation may have to give back to society—to be a good corporate citizen. At first blush, the lawyer’s role in CSR may seem to be a simple one: to ensure that the business client complies with the law. But such a blunt statement oversimplifies the lawyer’s role in the corporate client’s decisionmaking process.
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-04-10
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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