page_title: United States corporate law
section_title: Corporations and civil law
hierarchical_section_title: United States corporate law / Corporations and civil law
caption_attribution_description: English: Shot of the Delaware Memorial Bridge at night.
context_page_description: United States corporate law regulates the governance, finance and power of corporations in US law. Every state and territory has its own basic corporate code, while federal law creates minimum standards for trade in company shares and governance rights, found mostly in the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended by laws like the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 and the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The US Constitution was interpreted by the US Supreme Court to allow corporations to incorporate in the state of their choice, regardless of where their headquarters are. Over the 20th century, most major corporations incorporated under the Delaware General Corporation Law, which offered lower corporate taxes, fewer shareholder rights against directors, and developed a specialized court and legal profession. Nevada has done the same. Twenty-four states follow the Model Business Corporation Act, while New York and California are important due to their size.
context_section_description: Corporations are invariably classified as "legal persons" by all modern systems of law, meaning that like natural persons, they may acquire rights and duties. A corporation may be chartered in any of the 50 states (or the District of Columbia) and may become authorized to do business in each jurisdiction it does business within, except that when a corporation sues or is sued over a contract, the court, regardless of where the corporation's headquarters office is located, or where the transaction occurred, will use the law of the jurisdiction where the corporation was chartered (unless the contract says otherwise). So, for example, consider a corporation which sets up a concert in Hawaii, where its headquarters are in Minnesota, and it is chartered in Colorado, if it is sued over its actions involving the concert, whether it was sued in Hawaii (where the concert is located), or Minnesota (where its headquarters are located), the court in that state will still use Colorado law to determine how its corporate dealings are to be performed.
  All major public corporations are also characterized by holding limited liability and having a centralized management. When a group of people go through the procedures to incorporate, they will acquire rights to make contracts, to possess property, to sue, and they will also be responsible for torts, or other wrongs, and be sued. The federal government does not charter corporations (except National Banks, Federal Savings Banks, and Federal Credit Unions) although it does regulate them. Each of the 50 states plus DC has its own corporation law. Most large corporations have historically chosen to incorporate in Delaware, even though they operate nationally, and may have little or no business in Delaware itself. The extent to which corporations should have the same rights as real people is controversial, particularly when it comes to the fundamental rights found in the United States Bill of Rights. As a matter of law, a corporation acts through real people that form its board of directors, and then through the officers and employees who are appointed on its behalf. Shareholders can in some cases make decisions on the corporation's behalf, though in larger companies they tend to be passive. Otherwise, most corporations adopt limited liability so that generally shareholders cannot be sued for a corporation's commercial debts. If a corporation goes bankrupt, and is unable to pay debts to commercial creditors as they fall due, then in some circumstances state courts allow the so-called "veil of incorporation" to be pierced, and so to hold the people behind the corporation liable. This is usually rare and in almost all cases involves non-payment of trust fund taxes or willful misconduct, essentially amounting to fraud.
caption: The state of Delaware is the place of incorporation for over 60 per cent of Fortune 500 corporations.[14] In 1999, from 6,530 publicly traded nonfinancial firms in the US, 3,771 (57.75%) were incorporated in Delaware, 283 (4.33%) in California, and 226 (3.46%) in New York.[15]
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