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Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons™
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Articles 1 - 30 of 32
Full-Text Articles in Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics
The Role Of U.S. Government Regulatioms, Bert Chapman
The Role Of U.S. Government Regulatioms, Bert Chapman
Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations
Provides detailed coverage of information resources on U.S. Government information resources for federal regulations. Features historical background on these regulations, details on the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations, includes information on individuals can participate in the federal regulatory process by commenting on proposed agency regulations via https://regulations.gov/, describes the role of presidential executive orders, refers to recent and upcoming U.S. Supreme Court cases involving federal regulations, and describes current congressional legislation seeking to give Congress greater involvement in the federal regulatory process.
Law And Authors: A Legal Handbook For Writers (Introduction), Jacqueline D. Lipton
Law And Authors: A Legal Handbook For Writers (Introduction), Jacqueline D. Lipton
Book Chapters
Drawing on a wealth of experience in legal scholarship and publishing, Professor Jacqueline D. Lipton provides a useful legal guide for writers whatever their levels of expertise or categories of work (fiction, nonfiction, academic, journalism, freelance content development). This introductory chapter outlines the key legal and business issues authors are likely to face during the course of their careers, and emphasizes that most legal problems have solutions so law should never be an excuse to avoid writing something that an author feels strongly about creating. The larger work draws from case studies and hypothetical examples to address issues of copyright …
The Reverse Agency Problem In The Age Of Compliance, Asaf Eckstein, Gideon Parchomovsky
The Reverse Agency Problem In The Age Of Compliance, Asaf Eckstein, Gideon Parchomovsky
All Faculty Scholarship
The agency problem, the idea that corporate directors and officers are motivated to prioritize their self-interest over the interest of their corporation, has had long-lasting impact on corporate law theory and practice. In recent years, however, as federal agencies have stepped up enforcement efforts against corporations, a new problem that is the mirror image of the agency problem has surfaced—the reverse agency problem. The surge in criminal investigations against corporations, combined with the rising popularity of settlement mechanisms including Pretrial Diversion Agreements (PDAs), and corporate plea agreements, has led corporations to sacrifice directors and officers in order to reach settlements …
Public Relations Litigation, Kishanthi Parella
Public Relations Litigation, Kishanthi Parella
Scholarly Articles
Conventional wisdom holds that lawsuits harm a corporation’s reputation. So why do corporations and other businesses litigate even when they will likely lose in the court of law and the court of public opinion? One explanation is settlement: some parties file lawsuits not to win but to force the defendant to pay out. But some business litigants defy even this explanation; they do not expect to win the lawsuit or to benefit financially from settlement. What explains their behavior?
The answer is reputation. This Article explains that certain types of litigation can improve a business litigant’s reputation in the eyes …
The Rule Of Reason, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
The Rule Of Reason, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
Antitrust’s rule of reason was born out of a thirty-year (1897-1927) division among Supreme Court Justices about the proper way to assess multi-firm restraints on competition. By the late 1920s the basic contours of the rule for restraints among competitors was roughly established. Antitrust policy toward vertical restraints remained much more unstable, however, largely because their effects were so poorly understood.
This article provides a litigation field guide for antitrust claims under the rule of reason – or more precisely, for situations when application of the rule of reason is likely. At the time pleadings are drafted and even up …
Bankruptcy’S Uneasy Shift To A Contract Paradigm, David A. Skeel Jr., George Triantis
Bankruptcy’S Uneasy Shift To A Contract Paradigm, David A. Skeel Jr., George Triantis
All Faculty Scholarship
The most dramatic development in twenty-first century bankruptcy practice has been the increasing use of contracts to shape the bankruptcy process. To explain the new contract paradigm—our principal objective in this Article-- we begin by examining the structure of current bankruptcy law. Although the Bankruptcy Code of 1978 has long been viewed as mandatory, its voting and cramdown rules, among others, invite considerable contracting. The emerging paradigm is asymmetric, however. While the Code and bankruptcy practice allow for ex post contracting, ex ante contracts are viewed with suspicion.
We next use contract theory to assess the two modes of contracting. …
The Shifting Tides Of Merger Litigation, Matthew D. Cain, Jill E. Fisch, Steven Davidoff Solomon, Randall S. Thomas
The Shifting Tides Of Merger Litigation, Matthew D. Cain, Jill E. Fisch, Steven Davidoff Solomon, Randall S. Thomas
All Faculty Scholarship
In 2015, Delaware made several important changes to its laws concerning merger litigation. These changes, which were made in response to a perception that levels of merger litigation were too high and that a substantial proportion of merger cases were not providing value, raised the bar, making it more difficult for plaintiffs to win a lawsuit challenging a merger and more difficult for plaintiffs’ counsel to collect a fee award.
We study what has happened in the courts in response to these changes. We find that the initial effect of the changes has been to decrease the volume of merger …
Antitrust Balancing, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Antitrust Balancing, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
Antitrust litigation often confronts situations where effects point in both directions. Judges sometimes describe the process of evaluating these factors as “balancing.” In its e-Books decision the Second Circuit believed that the need to balance is what justifies application of the rule of reason. In Microsoft the D.C. Circuit stated that “courts routinely apply a…balancing approach” under which “the plaintiff must demonstrate that the anticompetitive harm…outweighs the procompetitive benefit.” But then it decided the case without balancing anything.
The term “balancing” is a very poor label for what courts actually do in these cases. Balancing requires that two offsetting effects …
The Role Of Private Litigation, Benedict Heil, Benjamin Lee
The Role Of Private Litigation, Benedict Heil, Benjamin Lee
Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation
No abstract provided.
The New Governance And The Challenge Of Litigation Bylaws, Jill E. Fisch
The New Governance And The Challenge Of Litigation Bylaws, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
Corporate governance mechanisms designed to ensure that managers act in shareholders’ interest have evolved dramatically over the past forty years. “Old governance” mechanisms such as independent directors and performance-based executive compensation have been supplemented by innovations that give shareholders greater input into both the selection of directors and ongoing operational decisions. Issuer boards have responded with tools to limit the exercise of shareholder power both procedurally and substantively. This article terms the adoption and use of these tools, which generally take the form of structural provisions in the corporate charter or bylaws, the “new governance.”
Delaware law has largely taken …
The Importance Of Being Dismissive: The Efficiency Role Of Pleading Stage Evaluation Of Shareholder Litigation, Lawrence A. Hamermesh, Michael L. Wachter
The Importance Of Being Dismissive: The Efficiency Role Of Pleading Stage Evaluation Of Shareholder Litigation, Lawrence A. Hamermesh, Michael L. Wachter
All Faculty Scholarship
It has been claimed that the risk/reward dynamics of shareholder litigation have encouraged quick settlements with substantial attorneys’ fee awards but no payment to shareholders, regardless of the merits of the case. Fee-shifting charter and bylaw provisions may be too blunt a tool to control agency costs associated with excessive shareholder litigation, and are in any event now prohibited by Delaware statute. We claim, however, that active judicial supervision of public company shareholder litigation at an early stage reduces the costs of frivolous litigation to shareholders by separating meritorious from unmeritorious litigation before the full costs of discovery are incurred. …
Federal Securities Fraud Litigation As A Lawmaking Partnership, Jill E. Fisch
Federal Securities Fraud Litigation As A Lawmaking Partnership, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
In its most recent Halliburton II decision, the Supreme Court rejected an effort to overrule its prior decision in Basic Inc. v. Levinson. The Court reasoned that adherence to Basic was warranted by principles of stare decisis that operate with “special force” in the context of statutory interpretation. This Article offers an alternative justification for adhering to Basic—the collaboration between the Court and Congress that has led to the development of the private class action for federal securities fraud. The Article characterizes this collaboration as a lawmaking partnership and argues that such a partnership offers distinctive lawmaking advantages. …
Merger Settlement And Enforcement Policy For Optimal Deterrence And Maximum Welfare, Steven C. Salop
Merger Settlement And Enforcement Policy For Optimal Deterrence And Maximum Welfare, Steven C. Salop
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Merger enforcement today relies on settlements more than litigation to resolve anti-competitive concerns. The impact of settlement policy on welfare and the proper goals of settlement policy are highly controversial. Some argue that gun-shy agencies settle for too little while others argue that agencies use their power to delay to extract over-reaching settlement terms, even when mergers are not welfare-reducing. This article uses decision theory to throw light on this controversy. The goal of this article is to formulate and analyze agency merger enforcement and settlement commitment policies in the face of imperfect information, litigation costs, and delay risks by …
Sue On Pay: Say On Pay’S Impact On Directors’ Fiduciary Duties, Lisa Fairfax
Sue On Pay: Say On Pay’S Impact On Directors’ Fiduciary Duties, Lisa Fairfax
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article advances a normative case for using say on pay litigation to enhance the state courts’ role in policing directors’ compensation decisions. Outrage over what many perceive to be excessive executive compensation has escalated dramatically in recent years. In 2010, such outrage prompted Congress to mandate say on pay—a nonbinding shareholder vote on executive compensation. In the wake of say on pay votes, some shareholders have brought suit against directors alleging that a negative vote indicates a breach of directors’ fiduciary duties. To date, the vast majority of courts have rejected these suits. This Article insists that such rejection …
Transparency Through Insurance: Mandates Dominate Discretion, Tom Baker
Transparency Through Insurance: Mandates Dominate Discretion, Tom Baker
All Faculty Scholarship
This chapter describes how liability insurance has contributed to the transparency of the civil justice system. The chapter makes three main points. First, much of what we know about the empirics of the civil justice system comes from access to liability insurance data and personnel. Second, as long as access to liability insurance data and personnel depends on the discretion of liability insurance organizations, this knowledge will be incomplete and, most likely, biased in favor of the public policy agenda of the organizations providing discretionary access to the data. Third, although mandatory disclosure of liability insurance data would improve transparency, …
A Moral Contractual Approach To Labor Law Reform: A Template For Using Ethical Principles To Regulate Behavior Where Law Failed To Do So Effectively, Zev J. Eigen, David S. Sherwyn
A Moral Contractual Approach To Labor Law Reform: A Template For Using Ethical Principles To Regulate Behavior Where Law Failed To Do So Effectively, Zev J. Eigen, David S. Sherwyn
Faculty Working Papers
If laws cease to work as they should or as intended, legislators and scholars propose new laws to replace or amend them. This paper posits an alternative—offering regulated parties the opportunity to contractually bind themselves to behave ethically. The perfect test-case for this proposal is labor law, because (1) labor law has not been amended for decades, (2) proposals to amend it have failed for political reasons, and are focused on union election win rates, and less on the election process itself, (3) it is an area of law already statutorily regulating parties' reciprocal contractual obligations, and (4) moral means …
The Political Economy Of Fraud On The Market, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
The Political Economy Of Fraud On The Market, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Public Ownership. Firm Governance, And Litigation Risk, Eric L. Talley
Public Ownership. Firm Governance, And Litigation Risk, Eric L. Talley
Faculty Scholarship
Many going-private transactions are motivated – at least ostensibly – by the desire to escape the burdens and costs of public ownership. Although these burdens have many purported manifestations, one commonly cited is the risk of litigation, which may be borne both directly by the firm and/or its fiduciaries or reflected in director and officer insurance premia funded at company expense. An important issue for the "litigation risk" justification of privatization is whether alternative (and less expensive) steps falling short of going private – such as governance reforms – may augur sufficiently against litigation exposure. In this Article, I consider …
On Beyond Calpers: Survey Evidence On The Developing Role Of Public Pension Funds In Corporate Governance, Stephen Choi, Jill E. Fisch
On Beyond Calpers: Survey Evidence On The Developing Role Of Public Pension Funds In Corporate Governance, Stephen Choi, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Criminalization Of Corporate Law: The Impact On Shareholders And Other Constituents, Jill E. Fisch
Criminalization Of Corporate Law: The Impact On Shareholders And Other Constituents, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Reasonable Emissions Of Greenhouse Gases: Efficient Abatement For A Stock Pollutant, Howard F. Chang
Reasonable Emissions Of Greenhouse Gases: Efficient Abatement For A Stock Pollutant, Howard F. Chang
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Aggregation On The Couch: The Strategic Uses Of Ambiguity And Hypocrisy, Stephen B. Burbank
Aggregation On The Couch: The Strategic Uses Of Ambiguity And Hypocrisy, Stephen B. Burbank
All Faculty Scholarship
In this Essay, Professor Burbank comments on the essays by Professors Nagareda and Issacharoff. Welcoming the opportunity to revisit the interplay between procedure and substantive law and the question of democratic accountability that Professor Nagareda’s essay presents, Professor Burbank concludes that the parts of that essay are greater than the whole. He finds that Professor Nagareda’s pursuit of unifying themes and a general normative theory leads to inconsistencies in classification between procedure and substance and to an impoverished vision of institutional legitimacy. Professor Burbank voices concern that this quest, which is also evident in the current draft of the American …
Do Institutions Matter? The Impact Of The Lead Plaintiff Provision Of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Stephen Choi, Jill E. Fisch, A. C. Pritchard
Do Institutions Matter? The Impact Of The Lead Plaintiff Provision Of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Stephen Choi, Jill E. Fisch, A. C. Pritchard
All Faculty Scholarship
When Congress enacted the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act in 1995 (“PSLRA”), the Act’s “lead plaintiff” provision was the centerpiece of its efforts to increase investor control over securities fraud class actions. The lead plaintiff provision alters the balance of power between investors and class counsel by creating a presumption that the investor with the largest financial stake in the case will serve as lead plaintiff. The lead plaintiff then chooses class counsel and, at least in theory, negotiates the terms of counsel’s compensation.
Congress’s stated purpose in enacting the lead plaintiff provision was to encourage institutional investors—pension funds, mutual …
Vultures Or Vanguards?: The Role Of Litigation In Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Jill E. Fisch, Caroline M. Gentile
Vultures Or Vanguards?: The Role Of Litigation In Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Jill E. Fisch, Caroline M. Gentile
All Faculty Scholarship
The market for sovereign debt differs from the market for corporate debt in several important ways including the risk of opportunistic default by sovereign debtors, the importance of political pressures, and the presence of international development organizations. Moreover, countries are subject to neither liquidation nor standardized processes of debt reorganization. Instead, negotiations between a sovereign debtor and its creditors lead to a voluntary restructuring of the sovereign's debt. One of the greatest difficulties in restructuring claims against sovereign debtors is balancing the interests of the majority of the creditors with those of minority creditors. Holdout creditors serve as a check …
Is There A Role For Lawyers In Preventing Future Enrons?, Jill E. Fisch, Kenneth M. Rosen
Is There A Role For Lawyers In Preventing Future Enrons?, Jill E. Fisch, Kenneth M. Rosen
All Faculty Scholarship
Following the collapse of the Enron Corporation, the ethical obligations of corporate attorneys have received increased scrutiny. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, enacted in response to calls for corporate reform, specifically requires the Securities and Exchange Commission to address the lawyer’s role by requiring covered attorneys to “report up” evidence of corporate wrongdoing to key corporate officers, and, in some circumstances, to the board of directors. Failure to “report up” subjects a lawyer to liability under federal law.
This Article argues that the reporting up requirement reflects a second-best approach to corporate governance reform. Rather than focusing on the actors …
The Rule That Isn't A Rule - The Business Judgment Rule, Douglas M. Branson
The Rule That Isn't A Rule - The Business Judgment Rule, Douglas M. Branson
Articles
On a doctrinal basis, few areas of corporate law are more confused then the duty of care applicable to corporate officials and its handmaiden, the business judgment rule. The tendency of many scholars and practitioners has been to collapse the duty of care into the business judgment rule, as Professor Stuart Cohn pointed out more than a decade ago. The business judgment rule is a separate legal construct that is related to, but separate from, the duty of care and one which protects only proactive and not somnambulant directors and officers. The business judgment rule stays at center stage for …
Aggregation, Auctions, And Other Developments In The Selection Of Lead Counsel Under The Pslra, Jill E. Fisch
Aggregation, Auctions, And Other Developments In The Selection Of Lead Counsel Under The Pslra, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Two Observations On Holocaust Claims, William W. Bratton
Two Observations On Holocaust Claims, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Class Action Reform, Qui Tam, And The Role Of The Plaintiff, Jill E. Fisch
Class Action Reform, Qui Tam, And The Role Of The Plaintiff, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Class Action Reform: Lessons From Securities Litigation, Jill E. Fisch
Class Action Reform: Lessons From Securities Litigation, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.