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Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Law
Corporate Personhood And Limited Sovereignty, Elizabeth Pollman
Corporate Personhood And Limited Sovereignty, Elizabeth Pollman
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article, written for a symposium celebrating the work of Professor Margaret Blair, examines how corporate rights jurisprudence helped to shape the corporate form in the United States during the nineteenth century. It argues that as the corporate form became popular because of the way it facilitated capital lock-in, perpetual succession, and provided other favorable characteristics related to legal personality that separated the corporation from its participants, the Supreme Court provided crucial reinforcement of these entity features by recognizing corporations as rights-bearing legal persons separate from the government. Although the legal personality of corporations is a distinct concept from their …
The Separation Of Corporate Law And Social Welfare, William W. Bratton
The Separation Of Corporate Law And Social Welfare, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
A half century ago, corporate legal theory pursued an institutional vision in which corporations and the law that creates them protect people from the ravages of volatile free markets. That vision was challenged on the ground during the 1980s, when corporate legal institutions and market forces came to blows over questions concerning hostile takeovers. By 1990, it seemed like the institutions had won. But a different picture has emerged as the years have gone by. It is now clear that the market side really won the battle of the 1980s, succeeding in entering a wedge between corporate law and social …
Good Faith And Law Evasion, Samuel W. Buell
Good Faith And Law Evasion, Samuel W. Buell
Faculty Scholarship
Laws imposing sanctions can be self-defeating by supplying incentive and guidance for actors engaged in socially undesirable activities to reshape conduct to avoid penalties. Sometimes this is deterrence. But if the new activity, as much as the old, contravenes the normative stance of the legal project, it is a failure of law. The problem of evasion warrants response in many fields - not least in criminal law despite the frequent and too simple assumption that legality-related values require narrow prohibitions that unavoidably permit evasion. Three common responses to evasion have serious deficits. Foregoing control of evasion is a mistake if …
Shareholder Litigation: The Accidental Elegance Of Aronson V. Lewis, David A. Skeel Jr.
Shareholder Litigation: The Accidental Elegance Of Aronson V. Lewis, David A. Skeel Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
Unlike many key corporate law decisions, the 1984 Delaware Supreme Court decision in Aronson v. Lewis was not heralded by stories in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, nor in any other newspaper of note. Even now, few people other than corporate law experts are likely to recognize the name. Yet Aronson plays a pivotal role in many corporate law decisions that do get a lot more attention. Aronson established the parameters for filing derivative litigation against the directors of a corporation (or a third party, but derivative suits against third parties are now rare). A shareholder …
Welfare, Dialectic, And Mediation In Corporate Law, William W. Bratton
Welfare, Dialectic, And Mediation In Corporate Law, William W. Bratton
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Bill Klein extends an idealistic and progressive invitation with the Criteria for Good Laws of Business Association (the Criteria). The structure of our debates, he says, prevents us from joining the issue. The discourse will move forward if we can isolate core components on which we agree and disagree. The invitation, thus directed, is well-constructed. To facilitate engagement, each criterion is set out as pari passu with each other. And there is a good reason for the inclusion of each listed criterion. Each has an established place in public and private law jurisprudence. Each has influenced results, coming forth as …
Berle And Means Reconsidered At The Century's Turn, William W. Bratton
Berle And Means Reconsidered At The Century's Turn, William W. Bratton
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Part I places Berle and Means in the context of the legal theory of its day by comparing the work of Dewey on the theory of the firm and Douglas on corporate reorganization. This discussion highlights two progressive assumptions Berle and Means shared with these business law contemporaries-a confidence in the efficacy of judicial intervention to vindicate distributive policies and a distrust of the institution of contract. These assumptions would, in the long run, cause the book's prescription to land wide of the mark. After 1980, Berle and Means lost their paradigmatic status due to a combination of skepticism respecting …
Because All The World Was Not New York City: Governance, Property Rights, And The State In The Changing Definition Of A Corporation, 1730-1860, Hendrik Hartog
Because All The World Was Not New York City: Governance, Property Rights, And The State In The Changing Definition Of A Corporation, 1730-1860, Hendrik Hartog
Articles by Maurer Faculty
No abstract provided.
An Historical Development Of The Contract Theory In The Dartmouth College Case, R. N. Denham Jr.
An Historical Development Of The Contract Theory In The Dartmouth College Case, R. N. Denham Jr.
Michigan Law Review
The theory enunciated in the famous Dartmouth College Case may be said to date back to the very beginnings of corporations. Just when were the beginnings of corporations and corporation law is, however, a question that has long been a much mooted one, some claiming that they were not known until the middle ages, while others put their inception as far back as the time of Solon in Greece; still others name Numa as the true founder of corporations, by reason of his classification of the Romans into societies according to the manual trade each followed, but the first really …