Law Commons^™

Shareholder Primacy And The Moral Obligations Of Directors, Mark J. Loewenstein, Jay Geyer

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

One of the most written-about and important topics in corporate law is the fiduciary obligations of corporate directors. Increasingly, critics of American capitalism have urged that corporations, and implicitly, corporate directors, act in a more socially responsible fashion and thus eschew the notion that shareholder primacy is the exclusive guide to a director’s fiduciary duty. Under this view, directors must consider the effect of their actions on “stakeholders” other than shareholders and be guided by morality—doing the right thing—when making business judgments.

When directors move away from shareholder primacy, however, decision-making becomes more difficult and problematic. This article analyzes the …

The Insider Trading Prohibition Act: A Small Step Towards A Codified Insider Trading Law, Kayla Quigley

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

Many have called for reform to insider trading law, as the current judge-made doctrine is ambiguous, complicated, and ultimately permissive of many instances of trading on nonpublic information. Indeed, Congress has attempted several times to pass a uniform insider trading statute. Most recently, in December 2019, the House of Representatives passed the Insider Trading Prohibition Act (“ITPA”). The legislation codifies many current principles of insider trading jurisprudence while also expanding potential insider trading liability. Moreover, it attempts to fix gaps in the law that various cases, such as United States v. Newman, have declined to address.

Among other flaws, …

Who Makes Esg? Understanding Stakeholders In The Esg Debate, Matthew Diller, Stephanie Betts, Lorenzo Corte, David M. Silk, Scott V. Simpson, Lisa M. Fairfax, Carmen X. W. Lu, David H. Webber, Leo E. Strine, Jr., Sean J. Griffith

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Humanity Constrains Loyalty: Fiduciary Duty, Human Rights, And The Corporate Decision Maker, Malcolm Rogge

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

This article considers whether the values contained within the idea of human rights have normative priority over economic values as they are inscribed in shareholder-oriented interpretations of the duty of loyalty in corporate law. While stakeholder theorists have sought to expand the ambit of the fiduciary duty—arguing generally that corporate fiduciary law permits managers to take into account a broad range of stakeholder interests—this article shifts the frame of analysis: It proposes that the range of corporate fiduciary loyalty is constrained by human rights as normative values that are distinct from the strictly economic values that are given primacy in …