Voting Trusts and Antitrust: Rethinking the Role of Shareholder Rights and Private Litigation in Public Regulation, 1880s to 1930s

Historically, judges were reluctant to intervene in corporations’ internal affairs and displayed a particular wariness of shareholders’ derivative suits. By the end of the 19th century, however, they had begun to revise their views and to see shareholders’ private actions as useful checks on economic concentration.