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Full-Text Articles in Law
Using Proactive Legal Strategies For Corporate Environmental Sustainability, Gerlinde Berger-Walliser, Paul Shrivastava, Adam Sulkowski
Using Proactive Legal Strategies For Corporate Environmental Sustainability, Gerlinde Berger-Walliser, Paul Shrivastava, Adam Sulkowski
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
We argue that proactive law can help organizations be more sustainable. Toward that end, this Article first summarizes proactive law literature as it pertains to corporate sustainability. Next, it examines a series of cases on the pivotal nexus between proactive law and corporate sustainability. It then advances novel propositions that connect proactive law to central organizational design elements. The discussion traces further implications and suggests fruitful avenues for research and ways of using proactive law for firms to become more sustainable.
Keeping Shareholder Activism Alive: A Comparative Approach To Outlawing Dead Hand Proxy Puts In Delaware, Danielle A. Rapaccioli
Keeping Shareholder Activism Alive: A Comparative Approach To Outlawing Dead Hand Proxy Puts In Delaware, Danielle A. Rapaccioli
Fordham Law Review
Current trends in shareholder activism have brought to light the competing interests of management and stockholders. With a rise in shareholder activism, firms are continuing to include change in control provisions, known as proxy puts, in their debt agreements to counter activist success. Recent litigation regarding the use of these provisions has created a debate as to whether these provisions are valid under Delaware law. Moreover, companies and lending institutions have morphed these provisions into a more restrictive form, known as “dead hand proxy puts.” The controversy analyzed in this Note arises out of the use of dead hand proxy …
Too Vast To Succeed, Miriam H. Baer
Too Vast To Succeed, Miriam H. Baer
Michigan Law Review
If sunlight is, in Justice Brandeis’s words, “the best of disinfectants,” then Brandon Garrett’s latest book, Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations might best be conceptualized as a heroic attempt to apply judicious amounts of Lysol to the murky world of federal corporate prosecutions. “How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations” is the book’s neutral- sounding secondary title, but even casual readers will quickly realize that Garrett means that prosecutors compromise too much with corporations, in part because they fear the collateral consequences of a corporation’s criminal indictment. Through an innovation known as the Deferred Prosecution Agreement, or DPA, …
Culture In Corporate Law Or: A Black Corporation, A Christian Corporation, And A Māori Corporation Walk Into A Bar . . ., Gwendolyn Gordon
Culture In Corporate Law Or: A Black Corporation, A Christian Corporation, And A Māori Corporation Walk Into A Bar . . ., Gwendolyn Gordon
Seattle University Law Review
Recent Supreme Court cases have entrenched a new image of corporate civic identity, assigning to the corporate person rights and abilities based upon the cultural characteristics, social ties, civic commitments, and internal lives of the human beings involved in it. This vision of the corporation is exemplified in recent cases implicating a corporate right to engage in political speech (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) and a right of corporations to be free of government interference regarding religious convictions (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.). Although much is being written about the soundness of the results in these cases and …
Notes On The Difficulty Of Studying The Corporation, Marina Welker
Notes On The Difficulty Of Studying The Corporation, Marina Welker
Seattle University Law Review
In the award-winning documentary The Corporation, public intellectuals and activists characterize corporations as “externalizing machines,” “doom machines,” “persons with no moral conscience,” and “monsters trying to devour as much profit as possible at anyone’s expense.” In other footage, people on the street personify corporations: “General Electric: a kind old man with lots of stories;” “Nike: young, energetic;” “Microsoft: aggressive;” “McDonald’s: young, outgoing, enthusiastic;” “Monsanto: immaculately dressed;” “Disney: goofy;” “The Body Shop: deceptive.” The documentary, like screenwriter and legal scholar Joel Bakan’s book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, imparts dissonant messages about corporations. On the one hand, …
"Special," Vestigial, Or Visionary? What Banking Regulation Tells Us About The Corporation—And Vice Versa, Robert C. Hockett, Saule T. Omarova
"Special," Vestigial, Or Visionary? What Banking Regulation Tells Us About The Corporation—And Vice Versa, Robert C. Hockett, Saule T. Omarova
Seattle University Law Review
A remarkable yet seldom noted set of parallels exists between modern U.S. bank regulation, on the one hand, and what used to be garden-variety American corporate law, on the other hand. For example, just as bank charters are matters not of right but of conditional privilege even today, so were all corporate charters not long ago. Just as chartered banks are authorized to engage only in limited, enumerated activities even today, so were all corporations restricted not long ago. And just as banks are subject to strict capital regulation even today, so were all corporations not long ago. In this …
The Widening Scope Of Directors' Duties: The Increasing Impact Of Corporate Social And Environmental Responsibility, Thomas Clarke
The Widening Scope Of Directors' Duties: The Increasing Impact Of Corporate Social And Environmental Responsibility, Thomas Clarke
Seattle University Law Review
This Article concerns the widening scope of directors’ duties under the increasing impact of the pressures for corporate social and environmental responsibility. Narrow interpretations of directors’ duties that focus simply on the commercial success of the business and relegate other considerations to externalities are not tenable in the present context. The dawning realization of the global consequences of imminent climate change provides a series of inescapable challenges for business enterprises.
What Might Replace The Modern Corporation? Uberization And The Web Page Enterprise, Gerald F. Davis
What Might Replace The Modern Corporation? Uberization And The Web Page Enterprise, Gerald F. Davis
Seattle University Law Review
The number of public corporations in the United States has been in decline for almost twenty years. Alternative forms of organization, from LLCs and benefit corporations to Linux and Wikipedia, provide robust competition to traditional corporations, while short-lived, project-based enterprises that assemble supply chains from available parts are increasingly cost effective. Yet our understanding of corporate governance has not kept pace with the new organization of the economy and we continue to treat the public corporation with dispersed ownership as the default form of doing business. Meanwhile, many of the corporations going public in recent years have abandoned traditional standards …
Corporations In The Flow Of Culture, Greg Urban
Corporations In The Flow Of Culture, Greg Urban
Seattle University Law Review
As an anthropologist, coming out of three decades of research among indigenous Brazilian populations, I naturally saw modern for-profit business corporations as tribes—the collective bearers of adaptive cultural know-how. They appeared to me to be the entities housing the culture needed to produce commodities, to trade commodities on the open market, or both. I was also, of course, aware of the legal concept of the corporation as fictive person capable of owning property and having standing in court cases, which I thought of as akin to the anthropological corporation insofar as both recognized the group as social actor. However, it …
Agency Theory As Prophecy: How Boards, Analysts, And Fund Managers Perform Their Roles, Jiwook Jung, Frank Dobbin
Agency Theory As Prophecy: How Boards, Analysts, And Fund Managers Perform Their Roles, Jiwook Jung, Frank Dobbin
Seattle University Law Review
In 1976, Michael Jensen and William Meckling published a paper reintroducing agency theory that explained how the modern corporation is structured to serve dispersed shareholders. They purported to describe the world as it exists but, in fact, they described a utopia, and their piece was read as a blueprint for that utopia. We take a page from the sociology of knowledge to argue that, in the modern world, economic theories function as prescriptions for behavior as much as they function as descriptions. Economists and management theorists often act as prophets rather than scientists, describing the world not as it is, …
The Theory Of Fields And Its Application To Corporate Governance, Neil Fligstein
The Theory Of Fields And Its Application To Corporate Governance, Neil Fligstein
Seattle University Law Review
My goal here is twofold. First, I want to introduce the theory of strategic action fields to the law audience. The main idea in field theory in sociology is that most social action occurs in social arenas where actors know one another and take one another into account in their action. Scholars use the field construct to make sense of how and why social orders emerge, reproduce, and transform. Underlying this formulation is the idea that a field is an ongoing game where actors have to understand what others are doing in order to frame their actions. Second, I want …
The Troubling Problem Of Income Inequality: A Few Thoughts, James F. Freeley
The Troubling Problem Of Income Inequality: A Few Thoughts, James F. Freeley
University of Massachusetts Law Review
Income inequality has become an important public policy issue in the United States. This Essay examines the issue in a political, economic, and legal context. It argues that the only policy responses that will work to address the underlying trends are ones that put a priority upon hiring people at a living wage and encouraging entrepreneurship and growth at all levels of the economy.
Dual-Class Capital Structures: A Legal, Theoretical & Empirical Buy-Side Analysis, Christopher C. Mckinnon
Dual-Class Capital Structures: A Legal, Theoretical & Empirical Buy-Side Analysis, Christopher C. Mckinnon
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
“The advantage of a dual-class share structure is that it protects entrepreneurial management from the demands of ordinary shareholders. The disadvantage of a dual-class share structure is that it protects entrepreneurial management from the demands of shareholders.” Issuing dual classes of stock has become hotly debated since two major events transpired in 2014: (1) Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion and (2) Alibaba chose to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) instead of the Hong Kong Exchange. Because dual-class managers, like those at Facebook and Alibaba, retain a controlling voting block, their decisions are immune from …
Has The S-Corp Run Its Course? The Past Successes And Future Possibilities Of The S Corporation, David Branham
Has The S-Corp Run Its Course? The Past Successes And Future Possibilities Of The S Corporation, David Branham
Journal of Legislation
The United States' economy has benefited greatly by providing an atmosphere where small businesses can grow in a free marketplace. The S-Corporation and its tax advantages have played a pivotal role in our strong economy. In order to ensure continued success as a part of the economy, the S-Corporation element prohibiting foreign shareholders needs to be adjusted.
Open Sesame: The Myth Of Alibaba's Extreme Corporate Governance And Control, Yu-Hsin Lin, Thomas Mehaffy
Open Sesame: The Myth Of Alibaba's Extreme Corporate Governance And Control, Yu-Hsin Lin, Thomas Mehaffy
Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law
In September 2014, Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Alibaba) successfully launched a $25 billion initial public offering (IPO), the largest IPO ever, on New York Stock Exchange. Alibaba’s IPO success witnessed a wave among Chinese Internet companies to raise capital in U.S capital markets. A significant number of these companies have employed a novel, but poorly understood corporate ownership and control mechanism—the variable interest entity (VIE) structure and/or the disproportional control structure. The VIE structure was created in response to the Chinese restriction on foreign investments; however, it carries the risk of being declared illegal under Chinese law. The disproportional control …
The Corporation’S Place In Society, Gabriel Rauterberg
The Corporation’S Place In Society, Gabriel Rauterberg
Michigan Law Review
The vast majority of economic activity is now organized through corporations. The public corporation is usurping the state’s role as the most important institution of wealthy capitalist societies. Across the developed world, there is increasing convergence on the shareholder-owned corporation as the primary vehicle for creating wealth. Yet nothing like this degree of convergence has occurred in answering the fundamental questions of corporate capitalism: What role do corporations serve? What is the goal of corporate law? What should corporate managers do? Discussion of these questions is as old as the institutions involved.