Legal stasis in the face of rapid economic change poses serious challenges to deterministic and functional interpretations in the theory of law, institutions, and economic performance. This book explores a particu- larly important example: the slow and contradictory development in the law of business organization in England during the critical phase of the Industrial Revolution. Based on extensive primary source research, Ron Harris shows how the institutional development of major forms of busi- ness organization – the business corporation, the partnership, the trust, the unincorporated company – evolved during this period. He also dem- onstrates how this slow and peculiar path of legal change interacted with and affected the practice.
