Joel Bakan

WRITER / CO-CREATOR / ASSOCIATE PRODUCER

Joel Bakan is professor of law at the University of British Columbia, and an internationally recognized legal scholar. A former Rhodes Scholar and law clerk to Chief Justice Brian Dickson of the Supreme Court of Canada, he has law degrees from Oxford, Dalhousie, and Harvard. His work examines the social, economic, and political dimensions of law, and he has published in leading legal and social science journals as well as in the popular press. His most recent book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, was published in March 2004 by Penguin Canada and, in the United States, by Simon and Schuster, and is the basis of THE CORPORATION, on which he is co-creator (with Mark Achbar), associate producer, and writer.

Bakan's previous book, Just Words: Constitutional Rights and Social Wrongs, was widely and favorably reviewed. Bakan has won numerous awards for his scholarship and teaching, worked on landmark legal cases and government policy, and served frequently as a media commentator. He lives in Vancouver, Canada with his son, Myim, and his partner, Rebecca Jenkins and her daughter, Sadie.

To book Joel for a speaking engagment, please contact Etta Spear.

Statement

My main interest as a legal scholar is in how the law shapes and is shaped by social and economic forces. The Corporation is a project that came out of this interest. In 1997 I published Just Word in which I argued that constitutional rights were becoming increasingly ineffective in protecting the ideals they embodied, such as freedom, equality and justice. One reason for this, I suggested, was that constitutions apply only to governments; they do not apply to the key institution of market capitalism-the corporation.

The problem was especially pressing because, with economic globalization in full swing, corporations were emerging as global governing institutions, dominating societies and governments throughout the world. At the same time, most people had, and have, very little understanding of their true institutional nature. So it made sense to ask-what is the nature of this new governing institution? And what are the consequences of its growing hold on society? I developed the idea that the corporation, deemed by the law to be a person, had a psychopathic personality, and that there was something quite bizarre, and dangerous, in such an institution wielding so much power.

It was around this time that I met Mark Achbar, coincidentally, at a social event. He told me he was thinking about making a documentary film about globalization. We realized that we had a lot of shared interests and concerns and soon decided to collaborate on making a film about the corporation, as I wrote the book. Jennifer Abbott joined the two of us three-and-a-half years later, and, after three more years, The Corporation was made.

-- Joel Bakan