From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The corporate opportunity doctrine is the legal principle providing that directors, officers, and controlling shareholders of a corporation must not take for themselves any business opportunity that could benefit the corporation. The corporate opportunity doctrine is one application of the fiduciary duty of loyalty.
In a milestone in the settlement of the American West, President Abraham Lincoln signs into law the Homestead Act, a program designed to grant public land to small farmers at low cost.
The Homestead Act was meant to insure that United States citizens who actually wanted to farm land were the recipients of the government's largess.