Teaching Corporate Power Without Teaching Conclusions: A Law-in-Action Diagnostic Method for the Study of Global Corporations and the Law

This working paper sets out the law-in-action diagnostic methodology developed by Costantino Grasso for LAW3305 Global Corporations and the Law: Power and Society, a final-year LLB undergraduate module at the University of Exeter Law School. It addresses the pedagogical problem of how to teach corporate power without teaching conclusions: how to equip students to analyse corporate power rigorously while requiring conclusions to remain proportionate to the available legal and non-legal evidence. The paper documents an original teaching architecture that integrates Legal Realist and law-in-action analysis, source criticism, evidential reach, controlled distinctions concerning corporate power, and the separation of legality, regulatory adequacy, legitimacy and causal explanation. It also explains the principles through which that methodology is implemented in the design, sourcing, evaluation and visual development of teaching materials, and illustrates its evidential component through a worked application.