Science vs. Ideology: A comment on lynn stout's new thinking on “Shareholder primacy”

Abstract

I have never met Lynn Stout. Of course, just like any person even remotely interested in corporate governance and US corporate law, I know her insightful writings. But I do not know her personally. I know for a fact, however, that Lynn Stout is a nice person. And an excessively nice person she must be. Her paper on New Thinking on “Shareholder Primacy” talks about the surge of a new paradigm in corporate law. This is an excessively generous thesis. For we are not witnessing the takeover of an old science by a new one explaining facts better than the old stuff. We are witnessing the surge of a scientific analysis of the legal structure of the firm -and of the role of corporations to structure firms- which is replacing an ideology; not a science. This comment will comment on this ideology and the insightful critique developed by Lynn Stout in her paper.