Shareholder derivative litigation occupies a unique and uncomfortable position within the American legal system, as it upends the separation of ownership and control that is one of the hallmarks of the modern business corporation. Yet for all the attention paid to this phenomenon, virtually no commentators have critiqued it theoretically. This Article helps fill that gap by assessing shareholder derivative litigation from the various theoretical conceptualizations of the business corporation. In so doing, this Article demonstrates that certain significant divergences exist between the practice of shareholder derivative litigation and particular theories of the corporation. It is largely up to the reader to decide whether these divergences more properly call into question the practices of derivative litigation or the corporate theories found to be incongruent with them.