305 articles
Corporate law
Corporate law: the body of law governing corporations' formation, limited liability, directors' duties, and shareholder relations; also called company law, with medieval commenda roots and modern EU, US, and OECD frameworks.
Corporate personhood
Corporate personhood: the legal fiction treating a corporation as a juridical person able to own property, contract, and sue. Covers US doctrine from Dartmouth College v. Woodward and Santa Clara (1886) to Citizens United and Hobby Lobby, EU comparison, and debates over autonomous businesses and AI personhood.
Corporate raid
Corporate raid: an attempt to seize control of a public company to sell assets or force a merger; peaked in the 1980s with junk bonds and greenmail, declined after poison pills and legal defenses; modern version is activist investing.
Corporate tax in the United States
Corporate tax in the United States: federal tax on corporate net income, begun as a 1909 excise, set at a permanent 21 percent since the 2017 TCJA, with a 15 percent CAMT and state apportionment systems.
Corporation
Corporation: a legal entity acting as a single fictional person, also called a company or C corp, with separate personality, limited shareholder liability, board governance, double taxation, and veil-piercing limits.
Council Tax
Council tax is the local property tax on dwellings in England, Scotland, and Wales, introduced in 1993 under the Local Government Finance Act 1992 to replace the poll tax. Properties sit in bands A–H (A–I in Wales) based on 1991 (England/Scotland) or 2003 (Wales) values, with means-tested Council Tax Reduction for low incomes.
Counterfeit
Counterfeit: unauthorized imitation of a product or trademark passed off as genuine, distinct from pirated copyrighted content. OECD/EUIPO estimate about USD 467 billion, 2.3% of world trade in 2021, mostly from China, shifting to small-parcel e-commerce.
Cravath, Swaine & Moore
Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, founded 1819 in New York, is an elite corporate and litigation law firm, originator of the Cravath System and the Cravath pay scale, with offices in New York, London, and Washington, D.C.
Crazy Eddie
Crazy Eddie was a New York-area discount electronics chain founded by Eddie Antar, famous for Jerry Carroll's "insane prices" ads and a $120 million financial statement fraud exposed in 1987, leading to Antar's 1992 extradition from Israel and eight-year prison sentence.
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC): global nonprofit founded 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred; publishes the free CC copyright licenses (BY, NC, ND, SA elements, six combinations, version 4.0 since 2013), CC0, and Public Domain Mark, used on billions of works.
Creative Commons license
Creative Commons licenses are six standardized public copyright licenses (CC BY through CC BY-NC-ND) published since 2002 by the nonprofit Creative Commons, current version 4.0 (2013), granting advance reuse permission under attribution, share-alike, no-derivatives, or noncommercial conditions.
Criticism of Walmart
Criticism of Walmart covers the retailer's anti-union labor relations, low wages and part-time scheduling, supply chain labor abuses, community effects on small retailers, and FTC, EEOC, and wage-and-hour litigation, weighed against its lower consumer prices.
Crony capitalism
Crony capitalism, or cronyism in market economies, is an economic system where business success depends on close ties between business people and government officials, yielding protection, licences, contracts, and subsidies for the connected.
Cybersquatting
Cybersquatting is bad-faith registration of domains mimicking trademarks, fought via the 1999 US ACPA statute and ICANN's UDRP administrative process, whose only remedy is domain transfer or cancellation.
Data protection impact assessment
A data protection impact assessment (DPIA) is a structured process that assesses the risks of processing personal data, required under Article 35 of the GDPR.
Debtor
A debtor is a person or entity that owes a debt or other obligation, usually money, to another party known as the creditor; in secured transactions the debtor pledges collateral.
Defend Trade Secrets Act
The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 is a United States federal statute, enacted May 11, 2016, creating a federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation.
Delaware General Corporation Law
Delaware General Corporation Law (DGCL), Title 8, Chapter 1 of the Delaware Code: the 1899 enabling statute governing over 2 million corporations, including two-thirds of the Fortune 500, amended by SB 21 in 2025.
Delay, Deny, Defend
Delay, deny, defend is a phrase for insurer claims tactics, also Jay Feinman's 2010 book on insurance practices. Covers McKinsey-driven claims redesign, denial and appeal data, bad-faith law, and the 2024 UnitedHealthcare shooting reference.
Dentons
Dentons is the world's largest global law firm by lawyer count, formed in 2013 from Salans, Fraser Milner Casgrain, and SNR Denton, structured as a Swiss Verein, led by CEO Kate Barton, with 12,000+ professionals in 85+ countries.
Derivative work
Derivative work: a copyright work based on preexisting works (translations, adaptations, arrangements) under 17 U.S.C. §§101, 103, 106(2) and Berne Article 2(3); protection covers only new authorship, and Warhol v. Goldsmith (2023) bounds fair use.
Digital Markets Act
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a 2022 European Union regulation imposing obligations and prohibitions on large online platforms designated as gatekeepers, with fines up to 10% of worldwide turnover.
Digital Operational Resilience Act
Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), Regulation (EU) 2022/2554, is an EU financial-sector ICT resilience law, applicable 17 January 2025, covering ICT risk, incident reporting, testing, and third-party oversight.
Dividend
Dividend: a distribution of a corporation's profits to shareholders, typically cash and typically quarterly, declared by the board of directors. Key mechanics: record date, ex-dividend date, types, theories, and US tax treatment.
DLA Piper
DLA Piper is a global law firm formed in 2005 by the merger of the UK firm DLA and the US firm Piper Rudnick, with about 3,000 attorneys.
Don't be evil
"Don't be evil" was Google's informal corporate motto and code-of-conduct phrase from 2000, attributed to engineers Paul Buchheit or Amit Patel, cited in the 2004 IPO letter, dropped by Alphabet in 2015 for "do the right thing," and removed from the code's preface in 2018.
Donald J. Trump Foundation
The Donald J. Trump Foundation was Donald Trump's small private grant-making New York charity, run by his family and Allen Weisselberg, dissolved after a 2018 New York attorney general lawsuit over self-dealing and campaign misuse.
E-2 visa
E-2 visa, the US treaty investor visa under INA 101(a)(15)(E)(ii) of 1952, distinct from E-1 treaty trader: requires treaty-country nationality, 50% enterprise ownership, substantial at-risk capital, and a non-marginal business; renewable indefinitely, no green card path.
Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974
ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (Public Law 93-406), is the US federal law setting minimum standards for private-sector pension and welfare plans: fiduciary duties, vesting, funding, disclosure, preemption, and PBGC termination insurance.
Employer Identification Number
Employer Identification Number (EIN), also called Federal Tax Identification Number: a nine-digit IRS identifier (format 12-3456789) for businesses, tax-exempt organizations, estates, and trusts. Applied for free on Form SS-4; distinct from SSN and ITIN.