How Should the State Interact Constitutionally with Corporations which have significant power and influence over its population? Lessons from the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, 1788-1795

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The question how to maintain constitutional accountability over large corporations has been an increasing theme in contemporary politics.
Governments and Courts across the globe have been addressing several constitutional issues in the last decade as a result of corporate behaviour. In North America, for example, Congressional hearings and investigations into tech companies have raised questions both around the integrity of freedom of speech online, and the exploitation of digital media platforms by foreign adversaries to influence democratic elections. In Europe, legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) aims to protect digital privacy rights and address exploitation of user data on digital platforms. Furthermore, in Australia, proposed legislative attempts to address bargaining imbalances between media companies and digital platforms has highlighted the dangers of market monopoly. The notion as to whether these large and powerful corporations are 'too big to fail' or are dangerous to the stability of democracy raises serious questions for society. However, there is an important question which underpins these actions -one which is jurisprudential in nature: how should the State interact constitutionally with corporations which have significant power and influence over its population? History can provide a guideline to this question. The question as to how States can and should interact constitutionally with powerful corporations, and how States can constitutionally hold corporations accountable, was explored and discussed in the 18th century during the Impeachment trial of Warren Hastings -  The impeachment trial against Hastings was not only as a result of his personal actions, however, but a last attempt by Parliament to address decades of EITC behaviour in India. The first attempt was in 1773 with the ratification of the East India Trading Company Act. 10 In response to reports of embezzlement and bribery, in addition to the company's financial ruin caused by widespread famine across the Indian continent, the Act sought to limit financial freedom through government oversight, prevent bribery and corruption with local leaders, establish British law in India, and restructure the management of the company (inaugurating Hastings as the Governor-General). 11 This proved to be a short-term solution, however. Abuses of power, corruption with local Britain in Parliament assembled, whose Parliamentary trust he has betrayed…[and] whose national character he has dishonoured." The list of impeachable offenses stretched far beyond Britain, however: "I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights and liberties he has subverted, whose properties he has destroyed, and whose Country he has laid waste and desolate." Hasting's activities were, according to Burke, much more  Burke,Vol. 5, As quoted in Dalrymple have conducted malevolent behaviour and has significant influence over a population -that of partly or completely nationalising companies so to provide a checks and balance system, and greater scrutiny, against the behaviour of the company.
When comparing the historical case of the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings with the modern-day, there are a number of stark differences which need to be mentioned. The first is that companies in the twenty-first century do not feature their own standing armies. The second is that, thanks to the development of Sovereignty and the rule of law through international organisations, formal colonialism no longer takes place in the twenty-first century. A third difference is that, as a result of deindustrialisation, the nature of how the majority of companies operate and conduct their services in developed countries has transferred from tangible to intangible economies.
However, the European idea of the corporation has endured and outlived imperialism; the twenty-first century has an abundance of multinational corporations -some of which have a market capitalization larger than that of nation-States -that conduct their operations in multiple countries across the globe. What are the similarities, therefore, as to how States interact constitutionally with powerful corporations today, and has it changed since the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings?
The first jurisprudential lesson of the impeachment trial of Warren Hastingsthat of the State interacting through the rule of law to protect natural rightscan be found in politics and international law today. The nature of these rights, and where these rights are situated, has shifted, however, from the tangible sphere in the case of the EITC to an intangible sphere on digital platforms (for example, the rights of life, liberty and property have been transferred into privacy, behavioural modification and consumer data in the intangible sphere). Nevertheless, the way in which the State has interacted constitutionally with corporations to uphold these rights has not changed since Hastings.
The lesson that the State will interact constitutionally to assert State sovereignty to provide a series of checks and balances against corporations which embody governing behaviour -as demonstrated by the impeachment trial -is an area which has changed, or become more complex, since the 18th century. As a result of privatisation policies in the 1980s and 1990s, the decreased responsibility of the State has changed its approach to addressing corporate behaviour which has significant influence (and therefore governance) over its population. Whereas partial or complete nationalisation was an approach used by the British State in the 18th century to regulate the EITC, nationalisation is now predominantly used as a means of providing constitutionally with corporations which harvest significant influence over a population. By scrutinising the behaviour of the East India Trading Company and its actions in India, the prosecution of the impeachment trial found two lessons as to how the State should interact constitutionally -that of upholding the rule of law to protect the natural rights of citizens, and the need to apply checks and balances by asserting State sovereignty through co-management of corporations. Such lessons are evident in the twenty-first century: States across the globe are introducing legislation aimed at protecting the natural rights of citizens against digital corporations. The intensification of globalisation, however, has changed the complexity of providing checks on corporate behaviour and raises questions around the jurisdictional legitimacy of States to hold global corporations accountable.