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“In the Belly of the Beast”: Rethinking Rights, Persons and Organizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Abstract

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Type
Review Essays
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1988 

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References

1 Edward, , First Baron Thurlow, 1731–1806, quoted in Mencken, H. L., A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources 223 (1946).Google Scholar

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3 Karl Klare has written on the varied connotations of the “public-private distinction.”“[It] is used to refer to the difference between ‘open’ and ‘intimate’-the key issue being ‘privacy.’ A second connotation is the difference between the world of work and government and the world of social life and family. …‘Public/private’ is also used to distinguish that which affects and concerns others and that which is ‘personal.’… The most important usage in labor law, and in the liberal political tradition generally, has to do with the distinction between the state and civil society.” Klare, The Public/Private Distinction in Labor Law, 130 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1358 (1982). Although Dan-Cohen rejects the public/private distinction in discriminating between the state and civil society (ie., public and private organizations), he retains the other distinctions.Google Scholar

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9 A related problem with Dan-Cohen's metaphor of the depersonalized organization is his focus on large, bureaucratic profit-making organizations such as IBM, GM, and ATGrT. Because organizations are marked hy immense variation in size, structure, goals, and lifespan, building an organizational jurisprudence using such examples distorts his analysis and limits its usefulness. Although Dan-Cohen admits that there is a conceptual continuum with organizations at one end and individuals at the other and that any particular organization may “inhabit the continuum,” he fails to describe that continuum. In fact, since he has described ideal types as his end points, all organizations (with exception of his mythical personless corporation) inhabit the continuum. Given this fact, more attention needs to be paid to distinguishing among organizations, analytically relating their structural and operational attributes to their moral status.Google Scholar

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