America’s First Corporate Person: The Bank Of The United States, 1789 1812

This is a hybrid event. The in-person reception will begin at 4:30 pm. 

Please visit here to register.

The traditional narrative of corporate personhood begins in the Gilded Age, as railroad corporations permeated federal courts to challenge state regulations, leading us to assume that personhood was always a source of power for private associations. However, this paper argues that the founding of the BUS reveals a dramatically different story. For most of the 19th century, legal personhood was a corporation’s most vulnerable attribute. The tumultuous career of the BUS provided American judges with the opportunity to craft a unique law of corporations—one that personified the institution while reckoning with republican ideology to support an emerging capitalist economy.