Forty Years of Corporation Law

תקציר

A reform of any body of law necessitates adopting new legal ground rules designed to improve the current situation. A reform is judged significant when the new rules have a major impact on society's daily life. In this respect, the last major reform in corporation law did not take place in the last forty years at all, but rather some 140 years ago, upon the implementation of the "limited liability" concept in England. In the first chapter, I analyze the term "significant reform" in the context of corporation law. I clarify why the concept of limited liability can be characterized as such a reform. In addition, we will note several other legal subjects that could have been construed as significant reforms. In the second chapter, I indicate the major stages in the development ofcorporation law in Israel, both in theory and practice, over the last forty years. I demonstrate why this development falls short of the criteria delineating a "significant reform". The third chapter, concluding this survey, specifies the prerequisites needed to set a reform on the right track. This is inseparable from an in-depth understanding of the economic and political processes that corporation law seeks to regulate, and the adaptation of the new laws to the challenges created by these processes.