Katharine Jackson | University of Cincinnati (original) (raw)

https://www.katharinejackson.com/

Kate is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law (incoming Fall 2023), and began her career as a legal scholar at the University of Dayton School of Law (Assistant Professor, 2021-2023) and as the DeOlazarra Fellow at the Program in Political Philosophy, Policy & Law at the University of Virginia. She received her Ph.D. (with distinction) in political theory at Columbia University in 2019. Kate teaches commercial law, legal theory and democratic theory.

Exploring the intersections of law, politics and economics, Kate's research focuses on how our normative commitments - both legal and political - both intervene in, and are driven by, the economy. She explores not only the autonomy rights, responsibilities and legitimation of big business, but also the government institutions meant to govern them. Kate's scholarship as appeared (or is forthcoming in) Politics & Society, Connecticut Law Review, the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, and the First Amendment Law Review.
​
Kate’s dissertation, Corporate Autonomy: Law, Constitutional Democracy and Big Business, is an interdisciplinary analytical examination of the rights and internal governance of business corporations in constitutional liberal democracies. Drawing from scholarship in political theory, economics and law, she conclude that corporations do not merit legal protections unless they first exhibit some internal democratic credentials.

In contrast to theories of collective moral personhood, she argues that the question of corporate ontology should not determine the kinds of legal rights it can claim. Rather, drawing from Dewey (1926), the law of constitutional liberal democracy should respond to shifting social ontology by defending the principle of equal human worth. After consideration of the literature on group agency (e.g., List and Pettit 2011) and group rights, (e.g., Benhabib 2002; Levy 2014) she argues that corporations are purposive, hierarchical institutions whose legal rights cannot claim to vindicate the liberties of their human members unless “there is freedom [for workers and investors] to say yes or no.” (Habermas, 1994)

Given labor markets characterized by monopsony, financial markets characterized by the “forced capitalism,” (Strine, Jr., 2017) and the control exercised by corporate leadership (Coase, 1937), ascribing corporate associational rights based upon the formal opportunity of market exit (cf., Kukathas, 2007) empowers elites at the expense of equal liberty. Further, although markets may constrain corporate choices, there is meaningful space for democratic decision-making within the corporation.

​

Her research intervenes in the new but growing literature inspired by controversial U.S. Supreme Court decisions awarding liberty rights to business corporations – rights that challenge the legitimacy of liberal democracy. Much of this literature relies upon analogical thinking, treating the corporation as an individual or as a state conscript. Her dissertation, in contrast, directly acknowledges the corporation’s hybrid public-private credentials by taking advantage of the ontological and normative bridge that law forms between states and markets.

This strategy will allow political theorists to examine additional contemporary economic problems that likewise claim legal provenance – from industry concentration to high finance – that implicate not only distributive justice but human freedom (Anderson, 2017) and democratic sovereignty.

In addition, Kate’s research shows how political theory’s robust literature in group rights, once modified with cutting-edge economic research, can be useful to theorists investigating organized market activity. The theory of corporate rights it presents, furthermore, offers an original justification for workplace democracy that relies neither upon a teleological conception of human autonomy (e.g., Pateman, 1970) nor revolutionary syndicalist aspirations. Finally, its focus on law suggests a new approach for scholarship that increasingly engages the connections between state and market. (E.g., Eich 2018; Tooze 2018; Fraser 2015; Arrighi 1994)

​

Prior to her academic studies, Kate practiced corporate derivative and securities litigation in the state and federal courts of both Delaware and New York.
Supervisors: Prof. Jean L. Cohen

less