Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons^™

Euthanasia Of The Coronavirus - Covid-19, Sheila P. Davis

Journal of Health Ethics

At the time of this editorial, COVID-19, aka the Novel Coronavirus, has wrecked havoc and left in its path of destruction, death, unemployment, the instability of nation’s economies, misery, uncertainty, despair, and a fear regarding what the new tomorrow will look like. And, perhaps more importantly, the question of who will be here tomorrow lingers. Now classified as a pandemic, this virus has resulted in over 1,381,014 cases worldwide with 78,269 deaths to date. Presently, Louisiana and Detroit are emerging as the next hot spots behind New York as the fastest rate of increase for COVID-19 cases in the world. …

Cartel Practices And Policies In The World War Ii Era, Caleb Yoken

Honors Theses

The goal of this thesis is to examine cartels in the World War II era: how and why they operated, why they existed, and any assistance they may or may not have received from their respective governments. This thesis, in particular, will focus on three countries, the United States, Germany, and Britain. Cartels are typically defined through the lens of monopolized business activity that can deal with anything from petroleum and steel to pharmaceuticals, and take actions to restrict output and raise prices to eliminate their competition. The research finds that cartels that operated in Europe during this era were …

Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Why are most capitalist enterprises of any size organized as authoritarian bureaucracies rather than incorporating genuine employee participation that would give the workers real authority? Even firms with employee participation programs leave virtually all decision-making power in the hands of management. The standard answer is that hierarchy is more economically efficient than any sort of genuine participation, so that participatory firms would be less productive and lose out to more traditional competitors. This answer is indefensible. After surveying the history, legal status, and varieties of employee participation, I examine and reject as question-begging the argument that the rarity of genuine …

A Theory Without A Movement, A Hope Without A Name: The Future Of Marxism In A Post-Marxist World, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Just as Marx's insights into capitalism have been most strikingly vindicated by the rise of neoliberalism and the near-collapse of the world economy, Marxism as social movement has become bereft of support. Is there any point in people who find Marx's analysis useful in clinging to the term "Marxism" - which Marx himself rejected -- at time when self-identified Marxist organizations and societies have collapsed or renounced the identification, and Marxism own working class constituency rejects the term? I set aside bad reasons to give on "Marxism," such as that the theory is purportedly refuted, that its adoption leads necessarily …

Neoliberalism And The Law: How Historical Materialism Can Illuminate Recent Governmental And Judicial Decision Making, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Neoliberalism can be understood as the deregulation of the economy from political control by deliberate action or inaction of the state. As such it is both constituted by the law and deeply affects it. I show how the methods of historical materialism can illuminate this phenomenon in all three branches of the the U.S. government. Considering the example the global financial crisis of 2007-08 that began with the housing bubble developing from trade in unregulated and overvalued mortgage backed securities, I show how the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which established a firewall between commercial and investment banking, allowed this …

Slides: Impacts Of Energy Deficits In Cooking, Illumination, Water, Sanitation, And Motive Power, Paul S. Chinowsky

2012 Energy Justice Conference and Technology Exposition (September 17-18)

Presenter: Dr. Paul Chinowsky, Director, Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities; Professor, University of Colorado

25 slides

Slides: Appropriate Sustainable Energy Technologies: A Light To The World, Lakshman D. Guruswamy, Jason B. Aamodt, Blake Feamster

2012 Energy Justice Conference and Technology Exposition (September 17-18)

Presenter: Jason Aamodt, Attorney; Adjunct Professor, University of Tulsa

15 slides

Understanding Csr: An Empirical Study Of Private Self-Regulation, Benedict Sheehy

Benedict Sheehy

Abstract: The article is a study of an important burgeoning form of regulation—private self-regulation—in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Rather than taking a purely theoretical approach or a social scientific study relying publicly reported data, the article addresses the issue by way of interview based case studies. As a study in regulation it clarifies the difference between various types of self-regulation, trade associations’ codes as private self-regulation and government sponsored self-regulation. This distinction hampers efforts to understand the important aspects of motivation and compliance. This study provides empirical examination of compliance in private self-regulation. Given the impact and …

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …

The Unconstitutionality Of Current Legal Barriers To Telemedicine In The United States: Analysis And Future Directions Of Its Relationship To National And International Health Care Reform, Deth Sao, Amar Gupta

Deth Sao

The current health care crisis in the United States compels a consideration of the crucial role that telemedicine could play towards deploying a pragmatic solution. The nation faces rising costs and difficulties in access to and quality of medical services. Telemedicine can potentially help to overcome these challenges, as it can provide new cost-effective and efficient methods of delivering health care across geographic distances. The full benefits and future potential of telemedicine, however, are constrained by overlapping and often inconsistent and inadequate regulatory frameworks, as well as the repertoire of standards imposed by state governments and professional organizations. Proponents of …

Tracking Berle's Footsteps: The Trail Of The Modern Corporation's Law Chapter, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Comprehensive Theory Of Deal Structure: Understanding How Transactional Structure Creates Value, Michael S. Knoll, Daniel M. G. Raff

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Neo-Brandeisianism And The New Deal: Adolf A. Berle, Jr., William O. Douglas, And The Problem Of Corporate Finance In The 1930s, Jessica Wang

Seattle University Law Review

This essay revisits Adolf A. Berle, Jr. and The Modern Corporation and Private Property by focusing on the triangle of Berle, Louis D. Brandeis, and William O. Douglas in order to examine some of the underlying assumptions about law, economics, and the nature of modern society behind securities regulation and corporate finance in the 1930s. I explore Douglas and Berle’s academic and political relationship, the conceptual underpinnings of Brandeis, Berle, and Douglas’s critiques of modern finance, and the ways in which the two younger men—Berle and Douglas—ultimately departed from their role model, Brandeis.

Delivery Of Legal Services To Immigrant Small Business Owners: The Problems And A Model To Solve Them, William A. Langer, Pablo A. Ormachea

William A Langer

Delivery of Legal Services to Immigrant Small Business Owners: The Problems and a Model to Solve Them. By Pablo Ormachea & William Langer

Immigrant entrepreneurs not only provide essential support for individual families, but also serve as key engines of economic growth for United States cities. While immigrant small-business owners continuously stimulate growth in various economic sectors, creating new jobs and helping to develop inner-city neighborhoods, they overcome considerable obstacles and barriers to reach these achievements. This article argues that a deeper understanding of such systemic barriers can help to reduce such barriers so that an increasingly larger number of …

Passive Discrimination: When Does It Make Sense To Pay Too Little?, Jonah B. Gelbach, Jonathan Klick, Lesley Wexler

All Faculty Scholarship

Economists have long recognized employers’ ability to construct benefits packages to induce workers to sort themselves into and out of jobs. For instance, to encourage applications from individuals with a highly valued but largely unobservable characteristic, such as patience, employers might offer benefits that patient individuals are likely to value more than other individuals. By offering a compensation package with highly valued benefits but a relatively low wage, employers will attract workers with the favored characteristic and discourage other individuals from applying for or accepting the job. While economic theory generally views this kind of self-selection in value neutral terms, …

Federalism, Variation, And State Regulation Of Franchise Termination, Jonathan Klick, Bruce Kobayashi, Larry Ribstein

All Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses and expands on our recent work examining the effects of franchise-termination laws. In a prior article, we examined empirically the effect of franchise-termination laws on the level of franchise activity. Our analysis improved upon the prior literature in two major ways. First, our work exploited two new sources of panel data to provide new empirical evidence on the effect of franchise termination laws. Second, our analysis examined variation in states’ restrictions on the ability of franchisors and franchisees to contract around a particular state’s regulation. We found that the effects of termination laws on the overall level …

International Strategic Alliance, Mohd Arif

Mohd Arif

A Strategic Alliance is a relationship between firms to creat more value than they can on their own

Agency Costs, Charitable Trusts, And Corporate Control: Evidence From Hershey's Kiss-Off, Jonathan Klick, Robert H. Sitkoff

All Faculty Scholarship

In July 2002 the trustees of the Milton Hershey School Trust announced a plan to diversify the Trust’s investment portfolio by selling the Trust’s controlling interest in the Hershey Company. The Company’s stock jumped from $62.50 to $78.30 on news of the proposed sale. But the Pennsylvania Attorney General, who was then running for governor, opposed the sale on the ground that it would harm the local community. Shortly after the Attorney General obtained a preliminary injunction, the trustees abandoned the sale and the Company’s stock dropped to $65.00. Using standard event study methodology, we find that the sale announcement …

Private Equity's Three Lessons For Agency Theory, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Disadvantages Of Immigration Restriction As A Policy To Improve Income Distribution, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I argue that tax and transfer policies are more efficient than immigration restrictions as instruments for raising the after tax incomes of the least skilled native workers. Policies to protect these native workers frol1'l immigrant competition in the labor market do no better at promoting distributive justice and are likely to impose a greater economic burden on natives in the country of immigration than the tax alternative. These immigration restrictions are especially costly given the disproportionate burden that they place on households with working women, which discourages fel1'wle participation in the labor force. This burden runs contrary …

The Legal Periphery Of Dominant Firm Conduct, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores two different but related problems and how U.S. antitrust law and EU competition law approach them. The first is the offense of attempt to monopolize, which concerns the acts that a firm that is not yet dominant might undertake in order to become dominant. The second is the offense of monopoly or dominant firm leveraging, which occurs when a firm uses its dominant position in one market to cause some kind of harm in a different market where it also does business.

The language of EU and U.S. provisions concerning dominant firms provokes one to think that …

Reasonable Emissions Of Greenhouse Gases: Efficient Abatement For A Stock Pollutant, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Measuring Efficiency In Corporate Law: The Role Of Shareholder Primacy, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

The shareholder primacy norm defines the objective of the corporation as maximization of shareholder wealth. Law and economics scholars have incorporated the shareholder primacy norm into their empirical analyses of regulatory efficiency. An increasingly influential body of scholarship uses empirical methodology to evaluate legal rules that allocate power within the corporation. By embracing the shareholder primacy norm, empirical scholars offer normative assessments about regulatory choices based on the effect of legal rules on measures of shareholder value such as stock price, net profits, and Tobin’s Q.

This Article challenges the foundations of using the shareholder primacy norm to judge corporate …

The New Dividend Puzzle, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rules, Principles, And The Accounting Crisis In The United States, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Securities Exchange Commission move too quickly ·when they prod the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the standard setter for US GAAP, to move immediately to a principles-based system. Priorities respecting reform of corporate reporting in the US need to be ordered more carefully. Incentive problems impairing audit performance should be solved first through institutional reform insulating the audit from the negative impact of rent-seeking and solving adverse selection problems otherwise affecting audit practice. So long as auditor independence and management incentives respecting accounting treatments remain suspect. the US reporting system holds out no actor plausibly positioned …

Pari Passu And A Distressed Sovereign's Rational Choices, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Gaming Delaware, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bankruptcy Judges And Bankruptcy Venue: Some Thoughts On Delaware, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …

Dividends, Noncontractibility, And Corporate Law, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.