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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Structure Of Corporate Law Revolutions, William Savitt Jan 2024

The Structure Of Corporate Law Revolutions, William Savitt

Seattle University Law Review

Since, call it 1970, corporate law has operated under a dominant conception of governance that identifies profit-maximization for stockholder benefit as the purpose of the corporation. Milton Friedman’s essay The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits, published in September of that year, provides a handy, if admittedly imprecise, marker for the coronation of the shareholder-primacy paradigm. In the decades that followed, corporate law scholars pursued an ever-narrowing research agenda with the purpose and effect of confirming the shareholder-primacy paradigm. Corporate jurisprudence followed a similar path, slowly at first and later accelerating, to discover in the precedents and …


A History Of Corporate Law Federalism In The Twentieth Century, William W. Bratton Jan 2024

A History Of Corporate Law Federalism In The Twentieth Century, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

This Article describes the emergence of corporate law federalism across a long twentieth century. The period begins with New Jersey’s successful initiation of charter competition in 1888 and ends with the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. The federalism in question describes the interrelation of state and federal regulation of corporate internal affairs. This Article takes a positive approach, pursuing no normative bottom line. It makes six observations: (1) the federalism describes a division of subject matter, with internal affairs regulated by the states and securities issuance and trading regulated by the federal government; (2) the federalism is an …


Federal Rules Of Platform Procedure, Rory Van Loo Jun 2021

Federal Rules Of Platform Procedure, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

Tech platforms serve as private courthouses for disputes about speech, lodging, commerce, elections, and reputation. After receiving allegations of defamatory content in top search results, Google must decide between protecting one person's public image and another's profits or speech. Amazon adjudicates disputes between consumers and third-party merchants about defective or counterfeit items. For many small businesses, layoffs and bankruptcy hang in the balance. This Article begins to uncover the processes that these platforms use to resolve disputes and proposes reforms. Other important businesses that intermediate, such as credit card companies ruling on a disputed charge between a merchant and consumer, …


Tax And Arbitration, William W. Park Jun 2020

Tax And Arbitration, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

When fiscal measures intertwine arbitration, undue mystification sometimes follows. To enhance analytic clarity, tax-related arbitration might be divided into three parts. The first derives from ordinary commercial disputes that become laced with incidental tax questions. A corporate acquisition, for example, might carry tax consequences which in turn implicate contract claims or defences presented to an arbitral tribunal for resolution. The second genre of tax-related arbitration arises in respect of cross-border investment disputes. Rightly or wrongly, foreign investors often perceive host-country fiscal enactments as discriminatory, unfair, or tantamount to expropriation, thus violating international commitments. Finally, arbitration comes into play under income …


Justice Deferred Is Justice Denied: We Must End Our Failed Experiment In Deferring Corporate Criminal Prosecutions, Peter Reilly Mar 2018

Justice Deferred Is Justice Denied: We Must End Our Failed Experiment In Deferring Corporate Criminal Prosecutions, Peter Reilly

Peter R. Reilly

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”), deferred prosecution agreements are said to occupy an “important middle ground” between declining to prosecute on the one hand, and trials or guilty pleas on the other. A top DOJ official has declared that, over the last decade, the agreements have become a “mainstay” of white collar criminal law enforcement; a prominent criminal law professor calls their increased use part of the “biggest change in corporate law enforcement policy in the last ten years.”

However, despite deferred prosecution’s apparent rise in popularity among law enforcement officials, the article sets forth the argument …


Cash Of The Titans: Arbitrating Challenges To Executive Compensation, Kenneth Davis Mar 2014

Cash Of The Titans: Arbitrating Challenges To Executive Compensation, Kenneth Davis

Kenneth R. Davis

Excessive executive compensation is endemic to U.S. corporations, and the trend is spiraling out of control. To challenge excessive pay packages, shareholders sometimes institute derivative suits. This approach has had limited success, however, because several principles of law – most notably the business judgment rule – shield directors from liability for awarding exorbitant pay to high-level managers. The business judgment rule removes the unreasonableness of compensation packages from the reach of judicial review. This Article proposes that corporations duly approve procedures to arbitrate shareholder challenges to excessive compensation agreements. Arbitration is uniquely suited for this purpose. Arbitrators are not bound …


Justice Deferred Is Justice Denied: We Must End Our Failed Experiment In Deferring Corporate Criminal Prosecutions, Peter Reilly Mar 2014

Justice Deferred Is Justice Denied: We Must End Our Failed Experiment In Deferring Corporate Criminal Prosecutions, Peter Reilly

Faculty Scholarship

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”), deferred prosecution agreements are said to occupy an “important middle ground” between declining to prosecute on the one hand, and trials or guilty pleas on the other. A top DOJ official has declared that, over the last decade, the agreements have become a “mainstay” of white collar criminal law enforcement; a prominent criminal law professor calls their increased use part of the “biggest change in corporate law enforcement policy in the last ten years.”

However, despite deferred prosecution’s apparent rise in popularity among law enforcement officials, the article sets forth the argument …


Secret Arbitration Or Civil Litigation?: An Analysis Of The Delaware Arbitration Program, Jores Kharatian Jan 2014

Secret Arbitration Or Civil Litigation?: An Analysis Of The Delaware Arbitration Program, Jores Kharatian

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

No abstract provided.


The Delaware Arbitration Experiment: Not Just A “Secret Court”, Jessica Tyndall Jan 2014

The Delaware Arbitration Experiment: Not Just A “Secret Court”, Jessica Tyndall

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

No abstract provided.


Delaware's Closed Door Arbitration: What The Future Holds For Large Business Disputes And How It Will Affect M&A Deals, Myron T. Steele, Thomas J. Stipanowich, Robert Anderson, James R. Griffin, Katherine Blair, Monica Shilling Jan 2014

Delaware's Closed Door Arbitration: What The Future Holds For Large Business Disputes And How It Will Affect M&A Deals, Myron T. Steele, Thomas J. Stipanowich, Robert Anderson, James R. Griffin, Katherine Blair, Monica Shilling

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

No abstract provided.


In Quest Of The Arbitration Trifecta, Or Closed Door Litigation?: The Delaware Arbitration Program , Thomas J. Stipanowich Jan 2014

In Quest Of The Arbitration Trifecta, Or Closed Door Litigation?: The Delaware Arbitration Program , Thomas J. Stipanowich

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

The Delaware Arbitration Program established a procedure by which businesses can agree to have their disputes heard in an arbitration proceeding before a sitting judge of the state’s highly regarded Chancery Court. The Program arguably offers a veritable trifecta of procedural advantages for commercial parties, including expert adjudication, efficient case management and short cycle time and, above all, a proceeding cloaked in secrecy. It also may enhance the reputation of Delaware as the forum of choice for businesses. But the Program’s ambitious intermingling of public and private forums brings into play the longstanding tug-of-war between the traditional view of court …


In Quest Of The Arbitration Trifecta, Or Closed Door Litigation?: The Delaware Arbitration Program, Thomas Stipanowich Dec 2012

In Quest Of The Arbitration Trifecta, Or Closed Door Litigation?: The Delaware Arbitration Program, Thomas Stipanowich

Thomas J. Stipanowich

The Delaware Arbitration Program established a procedure by which businesses can agree to have their disputes heard in an arbitration proceeding before a sitting judge of the state’s highly regarded Chancery Court. The Program arguably offers a veritable trifecta of procedural advantages for commercial parties, including expert adjudication, efficient case management and short cycle time and, above all, a proceeding cloaked in secrecy. It also may enhance the reputation of Delaware as the forum of choice for businesses. But the Program’s ambitious intermingling of public and private forums brings into play the longstanding tug-of-war between the traditional view of court …