Law's Monster: transforming corporate law for sustainable business

The planet is overheating, extinctions are commonplace, and huge swathes of the world are becoming unliveable. Business is the major cause of this crisis, largely because the rules and incentives created by corporate law drive businesses to be rapacious exploiters of people and the planet.
This book articulates why this is the case and how corporate law can be reformed to create sustainable business. It explores the ideologies underlying corporate law, particularly shareholder value maximization, and how those ideologies are enacted through law. It also investigates emerging corporate sustainability laws, a collection of laws designed to create more sustainable business. These laws are well intentioned, but they create a contradiction between the motivation of shareholder value and the motivation of sustainability. This book argues that for sustainable business to flourish requires a radical remaking of corporate law. Suggested changes include a far-reaching corporate purpose clause creating a director’s duty to respect people and the planet, limits on distributions to shareholders, and tax incentives designed to reward sustainability.