page_title: History of corporate law in the United States
section_title: Great Depression and New Deal
hierarchical_section_title: History of corporate law in the United States / Great Depression and New Deal
caption_attribution_description: Adolf Augustus Berle: "As a record, I like to think, it isn't bad"
context_page_description: The history of corporate law in the United States concerns the development of the corporation, primarily as a business organization, under the different United States corporate law, including federal regulation.
context_section_description: Limited liability was a matter of state law, and in Delaware up until 1967, it was left to the certificate of incorporation to stipulate “whether the private property of the stockholders... shall be subject to the payment of corporate debts, and if so, to what extent.” In California, limited liability was recognised as late as 1931.
  AA Berle and GC Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932)
  Securities Act of 1933 and Securities and Exchange Act of 1934
caption: AA Berle, with coauthor Gardiner Means, wrote The Modern Corporation and Private Property in 1932, as a response to the Wall Street Crash. They gathered evidence that in modern corporations directors had become too unaccountable, requiring New Deal law reforms.
exif: {}