ne of the four forms of business organization found in the American economy is the corporation.
When the United States Constitution was being drafted, James Madison pressed for Congressional authority to grant corporate charters. This move was defeated, and authority to grant corporate charters remained with the states. The right of corporations to exist without undue state interference, however, was not established. Two significant judicial cases established the right of corporate enterprises to exist without undue state interference. In 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall classified corporate charters as contracts, and the provisions of such charters as obligations that state legislatures could not impair. In 1837, Chief Justice Taney determined that, where a corporate charter contained no express provision against the granting of a competitive franchise, the granting of a charter to a competitor was not an impairment of the contract expressed in the original charter. The passage of various state laws based upon these two Supreme Court rulings, a
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