Incentives to attend parliament should have been common to both the French and the English nobility . Yet only the English nobility ended up being regularly involved in parliamentary proceedings. Their presence was fundamental for functional fusion and institutional layering to occur. Only where the nobility was compelled to attend parliament, especially in connection to its judicial functions, did the crown have a regular forum to raise taxation. Justice provided the regularity that taxation did not, allowing the institution to consolidate. Conversely, when the most powerful groups were regularly present in a central institution, they were able to solve their collective action problem and cooperate to oppose the crown. The chapter thus shows that the capacity of the English crown to compel nobles for judicial and political service was greater than that of France. The point is further established through the literature on Legal Origins, which explains the divergence of Common from Civil Law, as well as by an assessment of the remarkable level of conscription of English subjects to perform judicial functions that were disbursed by paid officials in France.

This is the first book to provide a comparative and critical analysis of why and how corporate governance and corporate law have been or can be used to promote and protect sustainability in the four common law jurisdictions in Asia, ie Singapore, Hong Kong, India and Malaysia. Based on theoretical, doctrinal and empirical research, I critically evaluate the rationales for, and effectiveness of, six corporate mechanisms, namely (1) sustainability reporting; (2) gender diversity on the board of directors; (3) constituency directors; (4) stewardship codes; (5) directors’ duty to act in the best interests of the company; and (6) liability on companies, shareholders and directors.