It is with fear and trepidation that this writer attempts to sum up the great amount of historical detail presented by this week’s speaker, the second in our member’s series, Sandy Brown.   The first thing he pointed out is that in our day-to-day lives, we interact more with corporations than we realize. School districts are part of municipalities, vocation schools part of counties, religious organizations and even charities are all registered as corporations.  But if we really want to understand corporations, we need to go back to 300 A.D. when the Roman Empire created corporate law (the word deriving from corpus meaning body = a body of people) as trade was booming.  After the collapse of the Roman Empire, corporate law picked up during medieval times as trade once again took hold, and significant time periods would include the East India Company and Dutch Company influence during the 1600’s, more modern publications such as “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith, taking us into the 1800’s when Britain created the Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) as their courts declared a corporation a separate entity.  New Jersey led the way in the States with the first corporate law act in 1896 though this was repealed in 1913, allowing for Delaware to become the State in which to incorporate your business.  Registering as an LLC gained popularity for as this structure allowed for better control and tax options.  Thank you, Sandy, for your presentation which, we understand, segues into Roger’s information being presented next week.