2022 Harold Ford Lecture

"‘No body to be kicked or soul to be damned’: The limits of a legal fiction" presented by Justice PA Keane AC, High Court of Australia

Date: 17 May 2022

The title of the lecture is drawn from the vivid observation by Lord Denning MR as to the fundamental difference between human beings and the corporation. The corporation, like other human artefacts, is a tool, useful as a means to an end, but the ends are human, and humans have a dignity that their tools do not. The lecture explores some respects in which this consideration may be said to limit the operation of the corporate fiction.

View a video recording of the lecture here.

View a Justice Keane's paper here.