Bottom line, the VA disestablishment battles "reveal the loss of a once-familiar route to incorporation," and "a glimpse of an alternate legal landscape where US corporations existed as fundamentally communal institutions."

SUPER interesting read, click here to check it out: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-history-review/article/from-disestablishment-to-dartmouth-college-v-woodward-how-virginias-fight-over-religious-freedom-shaped-the-history-of-american-corporations/241E34BB3611D19D81C9D991EB97A2A6

4/4

Not gonna try to do the wide-ranging arguments of the paper justice in a thread. But I did want to flag this part for law prof corps types, b/c at least to a non-expert, customary incorporation being A Standard Thing in 18th century entity law seems pretty significant.

"[Customary] corporate rights . . . were utterly familiar in the colonial Chesapeake, and the legacy of customary incorporation informed legislative debates and litigation in the Early Republic."

3/