Beware the East India Company: Big Business and the Road to Revolution
The tea in the Boston Tea Party belonged to a giant corporation. Here is how that Company helped turn a long-running tax dispute into revolution.
Long-form analysis
Latest Essays
The Bubble Act of 1720: How a Stock Market Crash Made England Scared of Corporations
How the South Sea Bubble and the law it left behind made incorporation a scarce, conditional government privilege for more than a century.
Brief observations
Latest Short Takes
The Security Ratchet
When fear takes hold, Americans repeatedly trade liberty for promised security—and almost never get it back.
Missouri’s Map Fight Is About More Than Partisan Line-Drawing
A rapid sequence of state and federal court orders returned Missouri to its earlier congressional map for November.
Supreme Court Leaves Existing Mail-Ballot Rules in Place
The Court declined to permit new Postal Service ballot-mail rules to take effect shortly before the midterm elections.
Week of November 2
Quotes of the Week
“If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.”
Bacon
“The covetous man heaps up riches, not to enjoy, but to have them; he starves himself in the midst of plenty; cheats and robs himself of that which is his own, and makes a hard shift to be as poor and miserable with a great estate as any man can be without it.”
Tillotson
Week of November 2
Cartoon of the Week
Week of November 2
Words of the Week
desultory
Lacking a clear plan, steady purpose, or sustained effort; moving from one subject or activity to another.
Synonyms: aimless, haphazard, unfocused, fitful
After a desultory debate that drifted from taxes to campaign slogans, the legislature adjourned without addressing the housing shortage.
lascivious
1. Common usage: Filled with or showing strong sexual desire.
Synonyms: lustful, lecherous, lewd
She flashed a lascivious smile.
2. Legal usage: Sexually lewd, obscene, or indecent; describing conduct outside accepted community standards of sexual propriety.
Synonyms: lewd, indecent, obscene
He was charged with indecent and lascivious conduct.
Courts & decisions
Latest Case Reviews
Marbury v. Madison: The Court’s Naked Power Grab!!
How did the Supreme Court claim the power to strike down acts of Congress? A trip through Marbury, Marshall’s clever maneuvering, and the shaky ground beneath judicial review.
The Missouri Congressional Map Orders
What the competing state and federal orders reveal about redistricting, timing, and the administration of elections.
The Supreme Court’s Mail-Ballot Order
Why the Court left the existing rules in place rather than permit a late change before voting began.
Rules beneath the rulings
Latest Legal Principles
A Corporation Is a Conditional Creation of Law
The older charter tradition treated incorporation as a limited public privilege, not an ordinary private right.
Public Power Does Not Cease to Be Public When Exercised Through a Corporation
The East India Company shows how private form and governmental purpose can become tightly intertwined.
Permanent selections
Enduring Commonplace Book
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities (1809), Part II, Chapter V
“One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests.”
Theodore Roosevelt, Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910
Week of November 2
The Lighter Side — A Brief Diversion
Lawyer Joke
Why did the lawyer refuse to take the stand?
He was afraid of heights.
Previous jokes →Courtroom Exchange
Previous exchanges →Attorney: Can you describe the individual?
Witness: He was about medium height and had a beard.
Attorney: Was this a male or a female?
Witness: Unless the circus was in town, I’m going with male.
Client Wisdom
“Stuff is stuff and that’s all it will ever be.”
Related: “In reality . . . no stuff is worth much of anything.”
Anonymous client · Collected over 30 years of practice
Previous wisdom →