作为社团的法人:重构公司理论的一个框架(上)
邓峰
【摘要】
Corporate as Association: A Reconstructual Framework of Corporate Theory
The exploration of the nature of corporation, after the 1980’s, with the rising of significance of the topic of privatization, insider control, stockholder oriented model, and pro and con of M&A, is reoccurred to a highlight in legal studies. The emerging wave, including the numerous troubles and misfeasance of corporate governance of public corporation, the social problem of unemployment, unfairness, unjustness in privatization of State-owned corporation, takes many scholars into putting their mind into the exploration and turning over into the nature of corporation. Now, the revision of corporation law is on the schedule of several administrative agencies, the comment on the “old” corporate law is now going public for opinion by the supreme court of China, but the idea of corporation is limited to the traditional civil law model, under the tough selection among the fiction theory, the nominal theory and the entity theory. The either-or puzzle dom is facing a new challenge in the conflict situation between the debate of stockholder and stakeholder.
In this article, the author develops a new explanation, which tries to unify the stakeholder and stockholder into a whole framework called corporate theory under the public dimension. This theory can be a review and restatement of corporation’s public/ private boundaries, which could embody and coordinate the conflict of stockholder and stakeholder, and could be the foundation for corporation, in a modern society facing so many different forms of organizations. This theory is also taking the nature of corporation for its will which could be separated from the members of association, which is allocated into different points in the dimension of publicity. With the different characteristic in the dimension of publicity, the independence of director board, the power of directors and managers, the accountability and fiduciary duties, the regimes of regulation could be adjusted to different and predictable ways.
【全文】
一、公司本质的争论
二、真正的争论:财产还是人格
三、stockholder vs. stakeholder:进一步的分析
四、公共性维度下的公司:重构社团理论
五、公共性的构成、内外关系以及社会效率标准
六、结论
法学界对法人本质的探讨,在80年代以后,随着“私有化”、“私法化”、“内部人控制”股东导向模式以及并购和反并购等主题,而重新成为一个热门话题。随着中国的上市公司的治理结构问题的暴露,以及国有企业民营化,公共企业商事化等改革的推进,现行
公司法的反思也日益深入,几个政府机关在筹划着
公司法的修订,最高法院在征求着解释意见的批评。然而,对公司、法人、组织的探讨仍然是局限于传统的“法人拟制说”、“法人否认说”和“法人实在说”,而更多地,随着stockholder和stakeholder的两种观念的冲突,三分法的法学理论解释力面临着新的挑战。
本文提出了一个框架性的解释,从对传统理论的分析入手,揭示了作为主体和作为客体的公司的两种观念在法律规则中的冲突,以及在现代社会中,公司理论如何面对众多的制度转轨。本文提出,公司的本质在于其“加总”的意志独立性,公司的公共化程度意味着公司意志独立性的增强,而带来相应的公司治理、
公司法调整方式的变化,以及公司控制和经营者的权力独立性的增强,也必然带来其责任的变化。
一、公司本质的争论
自1855年伊始,公司成了社会—经济生活的主角,进入到1870之后,兼并逐步兴起,公司本身也成了被买卖的客体。在这种人格—财产的双重性下,法律理论始终不能解决这一困境:公司,究竟是主体还是客体?
19世纪下半期,公司的迅速扩张的时代,也是一个合同自由的时代,法律用来解决公司的理论,也不过是合同理论的延伸。从达特茅斯学院案件解决了公司章程的自主性地位开始[1],一直到道奇诉福特案解决了董事的诚信义务必须指向股东,在此阶段,公司被视为信托的财产,而董事则是看护者,由此,董事的决策必须以股东利益最大化为导向。自萨洛蒙诉萨洛蒙案开始,则确立了公司的有限责任意味着公司的人格独立性,从而使得萨洛蒙这个控股股东加债权人可以轻易地侵害债权人的利益。在保护债权人上,公司被视为是财产;而在股东的控制上,公司则被赋予相对独立的人格。
而在我国的公司理论中,或者说,法人理论之中,通说认为存在着三种不同的观念:法人实在说[corporate realism]、法人拟制说[fiction theory]和法人否认说[symbol theory],尽管这三者的划分,在我国学者的引用之中,都直接或者间接来源于德国法[2]。法人实在说和有机体说混同,用来说明公司的实体性;而拟制说则是指人格与责任均来源于法律,否认说则是指公司是自然人的集合。