Elizabeth Warren’s Plan for Corporate Accountability and Reform

Author: Erin Lachaal | UC Berkeley School of Law | J.D. Candidate 2020 | Posted: September 8th, 2018 | Download PDF.

“I want to make sure we’ve got a set of rules that lets everybody who’s got a good, competitive idea get in the game,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a recent interview with Franklin Foer of The Atlantic.[1] She was discussing her recently proposed legislation that would fundamentally change how corporations in the United States are created and function day-to-day. She is aiming to return corporations back to what they once were: socially conscious entities looking to fill a supply gap in society’s needs.

Most people might describe corporations as inescapable. We are often unable to go more than a few minutes without some interaction with products from one of these large entities, but this was not always the case. The original purpose of a corporation was to allow the government a mechanism to outsource the building of fundamental public infrastructure that was necessary in a world of scarce capital and unpredictable public revenue.[2] (more…)