Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Home to almost 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies, Delaware’s reputation as America’s “corporate capital” has faced challenges in recent years. Tesla’s and SpaceX’s high-profile exits to Texas in 2024 highlighted other cracks in Delaware’s seamless relationship with large corporations, compounded by other states jockeying to attract businesses. Delaware’s government has launched a legislative charm offensive in response, passing several amendments in March 2025, which have eased restrictions on insider deals and reinforced the state’s commitments to low taxes and a business-friendly legal framework.

Corporations can be created in minutes almost anywhere, yet all share a core identity as legal entities with rights and responsibilities. Over time, they have replaced religious institutions and political parties as the most powerful actors in society, largely shaping what we consume, how we work, and influencing behavior and social norms. Their modern form traces back to 17th-century charters, with roots in Roman law. Though often tools of the state, global corporations have proven capable of operating across borders and legal systems, developing unprecedented sovereignty and power.

The benefits of corporations, including lower prices from scale, capital-driven innovation and efficiency, and global reach, have been undermined by the relentless accumulation of financial assets, particularly in the West. Short-term gains often supersede long-term value and sustainability, and despite stronger regulation on paper, modern corporations operate with greater independence from the state and increasingly avoid public accountability.

The basic model behind them remains intact, with core legal principles like limited liability and separate legal personality, stemming from early corporate charters from the 1600s and fully developed by the 1800s, still forming the corporate foundation despite enormous growth in their scale and influence. Over the years, calls for democratic renewal and institutional imagination have been mounting, pointing to a long-overdue rethinking of corporate power.

Building up to and Defining the Corporation

Before modern corporations, societies around the world developed institutions to pool capital and dilute risk for trade, construction, and investment. In the Roman Republic, societas publicanorum had transferable shares (partes), professional managers, and central offices, and bid on state contracts for tax collection and infrastructure. However, Roman law allowed any partner to dissolve the business at will, limiting their longevity, and these types of partnerships faded under the empire’s centralized bureaucracy.

After 313 CE, following the Edict of Milan, which legalized Christianity, the Catholic Church gained legal standing that helped it become one of Europe’s first enduring corporate-like entities. By the eighth century, European monarchs began issuing charters that bestowed privileges to monasteries, universities, towns, and tax collection, while guilds of merchants and artisans also emerged in the 11th century. This century also saw the emergence of the commenda in Italy, which allowed passive investors to fund merchant voyages for a share of the profits, an early form of limited liability that spread across Europe. Family banking dynasties from Florence emerged in the 14th and 15th centuries, building pan-European financial networks and eventually expanding to other industries like mining and manufacturing.

Similar models developed globally. The commenda is believed to be inspiredby Islamic qirad partnerships that began in the sixth century, where one party provided the capital and the other conducted trade. Beginning in the 1600s, large family firms in China thrived with imperial support. Maritime guilds thrived in Southeast Asian port cities like Majapahit and Srivijaya. Still, it was in Europe, where Roman and Canon Law fused, that legal innovation evolved most dramatically and took on the modern corporate form by the 17th century.

Before the rise of modern corporations, most businesses were family-run shops, temporary partnerships, or informal arrangements that lacked legal separation from their owners. What earlier institutions lacked was the five features defining the modern corporation; representation allowing designated agents to act on behalf of the firm without binding investors; entity-shielding protecting corporate assets from the debts of investors; capital lock-in preventing investors from pulling funds or forcing liquidation; transferable shares letting investors exit without disrupting operations; and limited liability ensuring investors aren’t personally responsible for corporate debts.

The most foundational corporate characteristic is a legal personality, the ability to exist separately from its owners, with its own rights and responsibilities. From the Latin corpus (“body”), this concept lends context to former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s controversial 2011 remark that “

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