The phrase “corporate tyranny” might seem to be nothing more than empty rhetoric, a muscular slogan with a plausible ring, but one lacking principled roots in the great tradition of political language which it echoes. In this Article, I aim to show that, on the contrary, it is indeed meaningful to apply the term tyranny in connection with contemporary corporate power—meaningful, that is, according to the criteria governing the use of that term within the limited government tradition’s Rule of Law discourse. I also aim to demonstrate that, according to traditional criteria, certain terms used to lament the harms occasioned by manipulative state power—namely, arbitrariness, slavishness and corruption—might plausibly be employed against the large business corporation. The implications are significant. If the present constitution of corporate power were shown to be hospitable to those ills, then the legitimacy of corporate power would have been called into question on distinctive Rule of Law grounds. The notion that economic power is a limited government problem was a central and recurrent theme in public debates in the United States from the American Revolution until the middle of the twentieth century. Since then, however, the notion of “limited government” has become synonymous with the limitation of state, rather than “private”, power; indeed, “limited government” has become a byword for the social philosophy that professes a belief in “small government”—a philosophy which, in effect, supports corporate power. In the light of that received wisdom, it is not surprising that there has been little scholarly inquiry into whether, and if so, how, the underlying moral commitments of the limited government tradition are incompatible with certain forms of contemporary corporate power. Within the confines of this Article, there is not the space to do more than demonstrate that further inquiry in this area would be worthwhile.

中文翻译：

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古代暴君可憎的原因：法治和公司权力构成

“公司专制”一词似乎无非是空洞的口头表达，这是一个带有似是而非的响亮口号的肌肉口号，但是却缺乏与之相呼应的政治语言传统的原则根源。相反，在本文中，我旨在表明，将暴政一词与当代公司权力联系起来确实是有意义的，这是有意义的，也就是说，根据在有限的政府传统中使用该词的准则。法治话语。我还打算证明，根据传统标准，某些术语用来哀叹操纵性国家权力所造成的危害，即专横，奴隶制和腐败。-可能有可能针对大型商业公司。含义是重大的。如果证明目前的公司权力宪法对那些弊端是好客的，那么公司权力的合法性将因独特的法治理由而受到质疑。从美国独立革命到二十世纪中叶，经济实力是政府的有限问题这一观念在美国公开辩论中是一个中心且反复出现的主题。但是，从那时起，“有限政府”的概念已成为国家限制而不是“私人”权力的代名词。实际上，“有限政府”已经成为人们信奉“小政府”的社会哲学的代名词，“小政府”实际上是一种支持公司权力的哲学。根据这种公认的智慧，毫不奇怪的是，几乎没有学者对有限的政府传统的基本道德承诺是否以及是否与现代公司权力的某些形式相抵触进行学术研究。在本条的范围内，没有更多的空间要做，只能证明在此领域进行进一步的调查是值得的。