CLARS Lunchtime Seminar: Susan Watson
Corporations are legal persons. The type of legal personhood that corporations have is centrally significant. It is key to understanding the nature of corporations, how they best operate to maximise value, and how we might justify intervention either at incorporation or while they operate. Rather than being metaphysical nonsense, in our Capitolocene age understanding corporations is essential for us to be able to appropriately control them before they control us.
Event Details
What Sort of Person is a Corporation? And Why We Should Care
When: Tuesday 10 February 2026
Time: 12:30pm - 2pm
Campus: Monash University Law Chambers
If you missed the seminar, the full session is now available to watch on the CLARS Video Portal.
Keynote Speaker
Professor Susan Watson
Professor Susan Watson holds joint chairs in the Faculty of Law, and the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Auckland. She is usually Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics but is currently the Acting Dean of the University of Auckland Law School.
Professor Watson researches and teaches primarily corporate law and corporate governance. She has a particular interest in the corporate form and in her research seeks to understand how the form developed, why it is so successful, and the economic and societal impact of corporations. Her current monograph The Making of the Modern Company focusses on these questions. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Corporate Law Studies (UK) and a Research Member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI).