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Articles 1 - 17 of 17
Full-Text Articles in Law
Legitimacy And Corporate Law: The Case For Regulatory Redundancy, Renee M. Jones
Legitimacy And Corporate Law: The Case For Regulatory Redundancy, Renee M. Jones
Renee Jones
This article provides a democratic assessment of the corporate law making structure in the United States. It draws upon the basic democratic principle that those affected by legal rules should have a voice in determining the substance of those rules. Although other commentators have noted certain undemocratic aspects of corporate law, this Article is the first to present a comprehensive assessment of the corporate regulatory structure from the perspective of democracy. It departs from prior accounts by looking past the states' role to consider the ways that federal regulation shores up the legitimacy of the overarching structure. This focus on …
New Principles For Corporate Law, Kent Greenfield
New Principles For Corporate Law, Kent Greenfield
Kent Greenfield
The fundamental assumptions of corporate law have changed little in decades. Accepted as truth are the notions that corporations are voluntary, private, contractual entities, that they have broad powers to make money in whatever ways and in whatever locations they see fit. The primary obligation of management is to shareholders, and shareholders alone. Corporations have broad powers but only a limited role: they exist to make money. Those who maintain these principles – a group that includes most of the legal scholars who teach and write in the area – have derived the narrow role of corporations in one of …
Reclaiming Corporate Law In A New Gilded Age, Kent Greenfield
Reclaiming Corporate Law In A New Gilded Age, Kent Greenfield
Kent Greenfield
Corporate law matters. Traditionally seen as the narrow study of the relationship between managers and shareholders, corporate law has frequently been relegated to the margins of legal discussion and political debate. The marginalization of corporate law has been especially prevalent among those who count themselves as progressives. While this has not always been true, in the last generation or so progressives have focused on constitutional law and other areas of so-called public law, and have left corporate law to adherents of neoclassical law and economics. To the extent that the behavior of businesses has been a matter of concern, that …
The Corporate Governance Of Iconic Executives, Tom C.W. Lin
The Corporate Governance Of Iconic Executives, Tom C.W. Lin
UF Law Faculty Publications
This Essay explores the special corporate governance challenges posed by iconic executives. Iconic executives are complex, bittersweet figures in corporate governance narratives. They are alluring, larger-than-life corporate figures who often govern freely. Iconic executives frequently rule like monarchs over their firms, offering lofty promises to shareholders, directors, and managers under their reign. But like many stories of powerful and influential figures, the narratives of iconic executives also contain adversity and danger. Part of the acquiescence and enchantment with such figures is rooted in the virtuous promises embodied by their presence, promises of unity, accountability, and effectiveness in corporate governance. Unfortunately, …
Understanding Csr: An Empirical Study Of Private Self-Regulation, Benedict Sheehy
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 …
Who Should Talk? What Counts As Employee Voice And Who Stands To Gain, Aditi Bagchi
Who Should Talk? What Counts As Employee Voice And Who Stands To Gain, Aditi Bagchi
All Faculty Scholarship
This symposium piece responds to an article by Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt titled "Promoting Employee Voice in the American Economy: A Call for Comprehensive Reform." Professor Schmidt argues in favor of increasing employee voice in corporate governance. In this reply, Professor Bagchi distinguishes between "hard voice," "soft voice" and information rights as three variants of employee voice. She casts doubt on the material benefits from Professor Dau-Schmidt's proposals, which focus on hard and soft voice, to either employees or corporate stakeholders more broadly. The present focus of corporate governance on the relationship between shareholders and managers, to the exclusion of employees, …
Citizens United And Forced Speech: Why Protecting The Dissenting Shareholder Necessitates Disclosure Of Corporate Political Expenditures After Citizens United V. Fec, Sabina Bunt Thaler
Citizens United And Forced Speech: Why Protecting The Dissenting Shareholder Necessitates Disclosure Of Corporate Political Expenditures After Citizens United V. Fec, Sabina Bunt Thaler
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
No abstract provided.
Good Faith In Revlon-Land, Christopher M. Bruner
Good Faith In Revlon-Land, Christopher M. Bruner
Scholarly Works
The Delaware Supreme Court has set a very high hurdle for plaintiffs challenging directors' good faith in the sale of a company. In Lyondell Chemical Company v. Ryan, the court held that unconflicted directors could be found to have breached the good faith component of their duty of loyalty in the transactional context only if they "knowingly and completely failed to undertake," and "utterly failed to attempt" to discharge their duties.
In this essay I argue that the Lyondell standard effectively imports into the transactional context the exacting standard previously applied in the oversight context — a move clearly aimed …
Freedom Of Reincorporation And The Scope Of Corporate Law In The U.S. And The E.U., Federico Mucciarelli
Freedom Of Reincorporation And The Scope Of Corporate Law In The U.S. And The E.U., Federico Mucciarelli
Federico M. Mucciarelli
In the U.S. corporations can be incorporated in any of the 50 states and can “reincorporate” afterwards in any other state. In the E.U. such freedoms are a recent achievement: In the last decade, first the European Court of Justice has liberalized initial incorporations and only in 2005 the cross-border directive has open the doors to freedom of midstream reincorporation from one member state to another. Midstream reincorporations, however, in the E.U. have a much different impact than on the other side of the Atlantic. In the U.S., indeed, the competence of the state where a company is incorporated is …
Enduring Equity In The Close Corporation, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Enduring Equity In The Close Corporation, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Scholarly Articles
This Article develops the theme of change/sameness in corporate law. Written to commemorate the thirty-fifth anniversary of Wilkes v. Springside Nursing Home, Inc., the Article argues that the equitable fiduciary duties so central to Wilkes endure today in the close corporation precisely because equity, by its nature, is so exquisitely adaptive – under constantly changing circumstances − to the ongoing pursuit of a just ordering within the corporation. Unlike fixed legal rules – which are categorical, static, and do not take sufficient account of changes wrought by time or human arationality – equity is malleable and timely as it reckons …
Russia's Lack Of American-Style Agency Priciples: A Primary Cause Of Corporate Governance Problems Today, C. Keith Marshall Jr.
Russia's Lack Of American-Style Agency Priciples: A Primary Cause Of Corporate Governance Problems Today, C. Keith Marshall Jr.
South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business
No abstract provided.
Is Social Enterprise The New Corporate Social Responsibility?, Antony Page, Robert A. Katz
Is Social Enterprise The New Corporate Social Responsibility?, Antony Page, Robert A. Katz
Faculty Publications
Since at least the famous Berle-Dodds debate, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and later its more muscular and structural iteration, progressive corporate law, have been discussed without much progress. The authors consider whether the social enterprise movement, which envisions a new sector of businesses created both to generate profits and pursue social goals, advances this debate. They conclude that it does. Proponents of social enterprise believe that such businesses can combine the dynamism of for-profit firms with the mission-driven zeal more typical of nonprofit organizations. Social enterprise and CSR have much in common: both want businesses to take the interests of …
Nascar Green: The Problem Of Sustainability In Corporations And Corporate Law, Matthew T. Bodie
Nascar Green: The Problem Of Sustainability In Corporations And Corporate Law, Matthew T. Bodie
All Faculty Scholarship
The concept of "sustainability" is, at root, about a commitment to considering the future of the planet in our everyday affairs. In the corporate law context, supporters of sustainability seek to integrate these long-term environmental and social concerns into the corporation's DNA. This article seeks to explore sustainability as a corporate law concept by looking at the sustainability efforts of NASCAR and its affiliated firms. NASCAR has undertaken a series of "green" initiatives, most notably in the promotion of alternative fuels. These sustainability efforts are facilitated, in part, by the unusual structure of NASCAR and the sport of stock-car racing. …
Insider Trading, Congressional Officials, And Duties Of Entrustment, Donna M. Nagy
Insider Trading, Congressional Officials, And Duties Of Entrustment, Donna M. Nagy
Articles by Maurer Faculty
This article refutes what has become the conventional wisdom that insider trading by members of Congress and legislative staffers is “totally legal” because such congressional officials are immune from federal insider trading law. It argues that this well-worn claim is rooted in twin misconceptions based on: (1) a lack of regard for the broad and sweeping duties of entrustment which attach to public office and (2) an unduly restrictive view of Supreme Court precedents, which have interpreted Rule 10b-5 of the Securities Exchange Act to impose liability whenever a person trades securities on the basis of material nonpublic information in …
Producing Corporate Text: Courtrooms, Conference Rooms, And Classrooms, Mae Kuykendall
Producing Corporate Text: Courtrooms, Conference Rooms, And Classrooms, Mae Kuykendall
NYLS Law Review
No abstract provided.
A Behavioral Framework For Securities Risk, Tom C.W. Lin
A Behavioral Framework For Securities Risk, Tom C.W. Lin
UF Law Faculty Publications
This article provides the first critical analysis and redesign of the existing securities risk disclosure framework given new insights from the emerging, interdisciplinary field of behavioral economics. Disclosure is the principle at the heart of federal securities regulation. Beneath that core principle of disclosure is the basic assumption that the reasonable investor is the idealized über-rational person of neoclassical economic theory. Therefore, once armed with the requisite information investors presumably can protect themselves through rational choice. Descriptively, however, real investors are not like their rational, neoclassical kin. This article examines this incongruence between the idealized rational investor and the imperfect …
The Model Business Corporation Act At Sixty: Shareholders And Their Influence, Lisa Fairfax
The Model Business Corporation Act At Sixty: Shareholders And Their Influence, Lisa Fairfax
All Faculty Scholarship
In the sixty years since the Committee on Corporate Laws (Committee) promulgated the Model Business Corporation Act (MBCA), there have been significant changes in corporate law and corporate governance. One such change has been an increase in shareholder activism aimed at enhancing shareholders’ voting power and influence over corporate affairs. Such increased shareholder activism (along with its potential for increase in shareholder power) has sparked considerable debate. Advocates of increasing shareholder power insist that augmenting shareholders’ voting rights and influence over corporate affairs is vital not only for ensuring board and managerial accountability, but also for curbing fraud and other …