Law Commons^™

Don’T Steal My Recipe! A Comparative Study Of French And U.S. Law On The Protection Of Culinary Recipes And Dishes Against Copying, Claire M. Germain

Working Papers

Food and gastronomy are at the heart of every culture. In 2010, The Gastronomic Meal of the French was listed as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. Interest in gastronomy became mainstream in the U.S. starting in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s. The emergence of cooking literature, television cooking, celebrity chefs, and competitive cooking programs have now permeated American and French popular culture like never before. It is also a huge business for restaurants. This article examines the legal status of recipes and culinary creations in U.S. and French law, and what can be done to stop others from copying …

A Legal Theory Of Shareholder Primacy, Robert J. Rhee

Working Papers

Shareholder primacy is the most fundamental concept in corporate law and corporate governance. It is widely embraced in the business, legal, and academic communities. Economic analysis and policy arguments advance a normative theory that corporate managers should maximize shareholder wealth. Academic literature invariably describes shareholder primacy as a “norm.” But whether the concept is “law” is contested because, remarkably, we still do not have a coherent legal theory. Our understanding of a fundamental tenet of the field is flawed and incomplete. This article presents a positive legal theory of shareholder primacy. It answers the questions: Is shareholder primacy law? What …

A Matter Of Trust: Why The Time Is Right To Adopt The Uniform Electronic Legal Materials Act (Uelma) In Florida, Patricia Morgan

Working Papers

The Uniform Electronic Legal Materials Act is an important piece of legislation created by the Uniform Law Commission. It has been adopted in many states and is pending in several more. The Florida Bar is part of a national movement for Access to Justice – seeking solutions for citizens who need to access the judicial system but are of limited resources. UELMA would ensure that online state legal publications (such as Florida’s Administrative Code) would be authenticated and preserved. This would ensure that citizens can access the documents they need in order to pursue legal solutions.

Employee Say-On-Pay: Monitoring And Legitimizing Executive Compensation, Robert J. Rhee

Working Papers

This Article proposes the adoption of employee say-on-pay in corporate governance. The board would benefit from an advisory vote of employees on executive compensation. This proposal is based on two considerations: firstly, the benefits of better monitoring and reduced agency cost in corporate governance; secondly, the link between executive compensation and income inequity and wealth disparity in the broader economy.

If adopted, shareholders and employees would monitor executive performance and pay at different levels. Shareholders through the market mechanism can only monitor at the level of public disclosures and share price. Employees can leverage private information. Non-executive managers in particular …

Worldwide Access To Foreign Law: International & National Developments Toward Digital Authentication, Claire M. Germain

Working Papers

This paper was originally presented at the World Library & Information Congress of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), Helsinki, Finland, August 2012, as part of a panel on Promoting Global Access to Law: Developing an Open Access Index for Official Authenticated Legal Information, Part II. Europe. http://conference.ifla.org/ifla78/programme-and-proceedings-day/2012-08-14. It focuses on worldwide access to the official word of the law, specifically to statutes, codes, regulations, court decisions, and international agreements in different foreign countries. The importance of improving global access to foreign law was highlighted at a 2012 joint European Commission/Hague Conference on Private International …

Digitizing The World's Laws, Claire M. Germain

Working Papers

Where does one find the foreign investment laws of Botswana? What about the copyright law of the Netherlands, the corporation laws of Japan, or the English translation of the Egyptian Civil Code? Already back in 1991, just before the internet, Wallace Baker remarked that “foreign law has become the daily bread of lawyers everywhere who formally had totally domestic practices.” Since then, the need to access the content of foreign law has increased exponentially. The importance of global access to foreign laws on the internet and how to improve it was recently highlighted at an international Meeting of Experts on …