This chapter begins the presentation of a normative theory of the corporation, assessing corporate law in light of the argument in Part II. It argues that the relational approach to law, developed and pioneered by 20th-century feminist political and legal theorists, has a natural affinity with the norm-governance approach developed in previous chapters. While not always explicitly dealing with the specific questions that this book is concerned with, the framework and method of analysis that these scholars have developed for other branches of the law are useful for drawing out the implications of the norm-governance theory for questions of corporate law. Drawing on this tradition, this chapter sketches out what a relational approach to corporate law and business entails, the types of concerns it can help register, and some of the consequences this approach has for how firms and corporations are, and ought to be, structured. This includes a novel way of understanding corporate personality, fiduciary duty, limited liability, and at-will employment.
