Definition
A corporation aggregate is a corporation composed of multiple members or individuals united into a single legal entity, capable of acting collectively as one body under an artificial legal personality. It is distinguished from a corporation sole, which consists of a single person and their successors holding a corporate office in succession.
The defining characteristics of a corporation aggregate are: (1) a plurality of members, (2) union under a special corporate name or denomination, (3) perpetual succession independent of the lives or identities of its individual members, and (4) legal capacity to act — to sue, hold property, contract, and be sued — as if it were a single person. The modern business corporation is the most familiar example, but the category historically encompassed municipal corporations, ecclesiastical bodies, charitable foundations, guilds, and colleges.
Common Confusion
CORPORATION AGGREGATE vs. PARTNERSHIP (AGGREGATE THEORY): The aggregate corporation should not be conflated with the aggregate theory of partnership. Under aggregate theory, a partnership is treated not as a distinct legal person but as a collection of its individual partners — essentially the opposite of corporate legal personality. The corporation aggregate is an entity; the partnership under aggregate theory is not. This distinction is foundational to the entity vs. aggregate debate in business organization law and is addressed directly in the encyclopedia entry on general partnerships.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Historically, corporations aggregate were classified along several axes:
Civil vs. Ecclesiastical: Civil corporations aggregate included municipal corporations (boroughs, cities), trading companies, and learned institutions. Ecclesiastical corporations aggregate included cathedral chapters, colleges of priests, and similar religious bodies. This distinction mattered for the governing law, the rules on dissolution, and the capacity to hold property in mortmain.
Eleemosynary vs. Civil: Some older authorities further distinguished eleemosynary corporations (founded for charitable purposes, such as hospitals or colleges) from purely civil or trading corporations. Eleemosynary corporations aggregate were subject to particular visitorial and supervisory rules.
Public vs. Private: A cross-cutting distinction between corporations created for public governmental purposes (municipal corporations) and those created for private purposes (trading companies, business corporations). Both are corporations aggregate, but their powers, liabilities, and the law governing them differ substantially.
Why It Matters in Research
The term "corporation aggregate" is primarily a term of historical and classificatory significance. Modern legal writing rarely uses it — contemporary sources simply say "corporation" and assume plurality of membership. Researchers will encounter the phrase most often in: (1) eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English common law treatises, (2) early American corporate law materials drawing on Blackstone and Kent, and (3) ecclesiastical law sources where the aggregate/sole distinction still carries operative meaning.
Trap for historical researchers: In older English and early American sources, "corporation" unmodified often meant what we would now call a corporation aggregate, because the corporation sole was the exceptional case requiring specification. Context is essential. A reference to "the corporation of the city of New York" is obviously aggregate; a reference to "the corporation of the bishop" is sole.
The mortmain connection is significant. Much of the restrictive legislation on corporate property-holding in English law — and the debates that shaped early American corporate law — was directed at corporations aggregate holding land in perpetuity beyond the reach of feudal incidents. Researchers tracing the history of corporate property rights or mortmain statutes will find the aggregate/sole distinction operationally important.
The encyclopedia entry on corporate types addresses how the modern taxonomy of corporation subtypes (close corporations, benefit corporations, professional corporations) maps onto the older aggregate framework. The general partnerships entry addresses the entity vs. aggregate debate, which is the doctrinal descendant of this classical distinction.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in close agreement on the core definition, both tracking the formulation drawn from Kyd's Treatise on the Law of Corporations and Kent's Commentaries — a collection of individuals united under a special denomination, possessing perpetual succession under an artificial form, and vested by law with the capacity to act as a single individual. This is the standard common law formulation, and its durability across editions reflects the stability of the underlying concept as a classificatory tool rather than an operative legal standard.
Burrill's text contains a curious interpolation concerning election requirements, oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and conformity to Church of England rites — material that belongs to the law of ecclesiastical corporations aggregate under specific English statutes, not to the general definition. This appears to be a textual artifact of the dictionary's treatment of a broader entry, likely on ecclesiastical corporations or offices. Researchers using Burrill should be alert to this kind of contextual bleed in entries that touch on English ecclesiastical law.
What the historical dictionaries do not adequately address: neither source engages with the transition from special-charter corporations (the dominant form through the early nineteenth century) to general incorporation statutes (which became standard in the United States by the latter half of the nineteenth century). For a researcher interested in the legal history of how the corporation aggregate moved from a privileged status granted by sovereign act to a routine organizational form available to any group meeting statutory requirements, the dictionary entries are a starting point only.
Jurisdictional Note
The aggregate/sole distinction remains formally operative in English law and in jurisdictions following the English ecclesiastical law tradition. In American law, the corporation sole is a recognized form in some states (used primarily by religious organizations and, in a few states, by public officers), but the vast majority of corporations formed under general incorporation statutes are corporations aggregate. The classificatory language itself has largely dropped from American statutory usage.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Corporate Formation — Corporate Types (Close, Professional, Benefit Corporations), The Law Mind Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia
General Partnerships — Partnership Property and the Entity vs. Aggregate Debate, The Law Mind Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia