Legal historians have traditionally characterized the late nineteenth-century shift in American corporate jurisprudence—from the 'concession theory,' which viewed corporations as artificial entities created merely by state fiat, to the 'real entity theory,' which conceptualized them as autonomous sociological organisms—as a decisive jurisprudential victory for corporate capitalism. According to this prevailing narrative, the real entity theory served to emancipate the corporation from state control, granting it inherent constitutional rights and shielding it from progressive regulatory efforts. However, this historiographical consensus rests on an anachronistic reading of the intellectual context out of which the real entity theory emerged.
A careful examination of the writings of the real entity theory’s earliest American proponents, most notably Ernst Freund and Arthur Machen, reveals an underlying theoretical objective fundamentally at odds with the deregulatory agenda retrospectively ascribed to them. For these legal scholars, the primary defect of the concession theory was not that it subjected corporations to excessive state interference, but rather that it conceptualized the corporation as a mere fiction. By treating the corporation as an artificial abstraction devoid of actual existence, the concession theory inadvertently created a jurisprudential lacuna regarding corporate intent and culpability, thereby making it exceedingly difficult to hold corporations civilly or criminally liable for the tortious acts committed by their agents. If a corporation was merely an artificial creature of the state, it could not possess the mens rea necessary for certain torts and crimes; any ultra vires act—an act beyond its chartered powers—was deemed legally non-existent.
Consequently, the real entity theorists championed the notion of the corporation as a sociological reality not to shield it from government regulation, but to ensure that it could be subjected to the same scope of legal accountability as a natural person. By asserting that the corporation possessed a real, autonomous will distinct from its individual shareholders, Freund and Machen provided the doctrinal foundation necessary to impose vicarious liability on the corporate form itself. Their theoretical innovation was thus animated by a desire to adapt the law of torts and criminal liability to the realities of industrial capitalism, bringing the expanding power of corporate enterprises under the purview of judicial oversight. Ultimately, the subsequent co-optation of the real entity theory by laissez-faire jurists to expand corporate constitutional rights during the Lochner era represents a historical irony, one that has obscured the theory’s origins as a mechanism for expanding, rather than restricting, corporate accountability.
Based on the passage above, state the author's primary purpose in writing the passage in a single, concise sentence.
Cevap: To challenge the prevailing historical narrative by arguing that the real entity theory was originally developed to expand corporate legal accountability. / To argue that early proponents of the real entity theory intended to increase corporate liability rather than shield corporations from regulation. / To correct a historical misconception by demonstrating that the real entity theory was initially formulated to subject corporations to tort liability. / To argue that the real entity theory was originally conceived as a mechanism for expanding corporate accountability, contrary to the consensus. / To challenge the consensus that the real entity theory was a deregulatory tool by showing its origins in expanding corporate legal accountability. / To demonstrate that the real entity theory was originally intended to increase corporate liability rather than protect corporations from regulation.