ABSTRACT
In chapter 8, we discussed how jurisdictional principles affect the conduct of litigation in multistate disputes. The simplifying assumption made there was that the parties were autonomous economic actors. However, most reported conflicts cases involve corporations, and some involve multinational corporations ( ‘MNCs’). Much literature addresses the aptitude of MNCs in reinventing themselves to avoid the exercise of authority by sovereign states, becoming, in effect, a law unto themselves.1 This is, aufond , a statement about the subjection of MNCs to jurisdiction. Some of the dilemmas associated with MNCs reflect a larger problem — corporations do not easily fit into the framework in which states determine when their courts should exercise jurisdiction. That framework assumes that defaults are autonomous economic actors. But almost a century of corporate law scholarship warns us to reify or ‘thingify’ the corporation at our peril. The better view is that corporations are accorded legal personality for pragmatic reasons, not ontological ones.2
