Law Commons^™

Federalism And Company Law, Richard M. Buxbaum

Richard M. Buxbaum

No abstract provided.

Employers United: An Empirical Analysis Of Corporate Political Speech In The Wake Of The Affordable Care Act, Elizabeth Weeks Leonard, Susan Scholz, Raquel Meyer Alexander

Elizabeth A. Weeks

Is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) bad for business? Did the countries' most prominent companies game the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure process to make negative political statements about ObamaCare? Immediately following the ACA's enactment on March 23, 2010, a number of companies drew scrutiny for issuing SEC filings writing off millions – and in AT&T's case, one billion dollars – against expected earnings for 2010 alone, based on a single, discrete tax-law change in the ACA. Congressional and Administration officials accused the firms of being “irresponsible” and using “big numbers to exaggerate the health reform's …

Federal Common Law And The Courts’ Regulation Of Pre-Litigation Preservation, Joshua Koppel

Joshua M. Koppel

With the proliferation in recent years of electronically stored information and the skyrocketing cost of retaining large amounts of data, issues of preservation have played an increasing role in litigation. Companies and individuals that anticipate that they will be involved in litigation in the future may be obligated to preserve relevant evidence even before litigation is initiated. Because litigation has not yet commenced, they cannot seek clarification regarding their obligations from a court or negotiate them with an adverse party. Statutory or common law preservation duties play a large role in guiding potential litigants in this area.

The federal courts …

Risk Based Student Loans, Michael Simkovic

Michael N Simkovic

Credit markets serve a vital function in capitalist economies: evaluating the riskiness of a range of possible investments and channeling resources toward those investments that investors believe are most likely to prove successful. This process is known as the “risk-based pricing” of credit. Ideally, risk-based pricing should lead to lower cost of capital for lower risk investment choices with larger rewards, and therefore more investment in such promising activities. Conversely, risk-based pricing should lead to higher costs of capital, and therefore less investment, in high-risk activities with relatively low rewards. If creditors are well informed and analytic, and borrowers respond …

The Dog That Didn't Bark: Private Investment Funds And Relational Contracts In The Wake Of The Great Recession, Robert Illig

Robert C Illig

In the aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis, the contract rights of numerous hedge funds and venture capital funds were breached. These contracts were complex and sophisticated and had been negotiated at great time and expense. Yet despite all of the assumptions of neo-classical contracts theory, nothing happened. Practically none of these injured parties sued to enforce their rights. Professor Illig uses this dearth of litigation to conduct a form of natural experiment as to the value of contract law. Discrete market participants contracted before the crash and then pursued their rights in court afterwards, while relational market participants contracted …

Cadbury Twenty Years On, Cally Jordan

Cally Jordan

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the Cadbury Report, one of the most significant events in modern corporate governance. The Cadbury Report, and its simple two page “best practices”, triggered a global debate on corporate governance. “Cadbury” codes of corporate governance spread like wildfire. The legacy of the Cadbury Report lives on in the UK with no diminution in the appeal of its voluntary code/comply or explain approach to corporate governance. But there are several clouds looming on the horizon. Comply or explain and voluntary codes of corporate governance appear to have run their course elsewhere …

Major Violations For The Ncaa: How The Ncaa Can Apply The Dodd-Frank Act To Reform Its Own Corporate Goverance Scheme, Jason Rudderman

Jason Rudderman

This paper applies the Dodd-Frank Act, and specifically its corporate governance laws, to the National Collegiate Athletic Associate (NCAA). The NCAA has experienced rapid, largely uncontrolled growth over the past decade that has led to an influx of corporate governance and regulatory problems within its member institutions. As with financial institutions, the influx of money itself is not the inherent problem. Money in college athletics is good. When large schools succeed, they help support smaller schools in their conference through revenue sharing plans. It is the lack of control and governance mechanisms regulating the influx of money that poses the …

Embryo Disposition Agreements: The Effect Of Personal Autonomy, Constitutional Rights, And Public Policy On Enforceability, Damages, And Remedies, Nicholas Seger

Nicholas D. Seger

No abstract provided.

The Big Banks: Background, Deregulation, Financial Innovation And Too Big To Fail, Charles W. Murdock

Charles W. Murdock

Summary: The Big Banks: Background, Deregulation, Financial Innovation and Too Big to Fail

The U.S. economy is still reeling from the financial crisis that exploded in the fall of 2008. This article asserts that the big banks were major culprits in causing the crisis, by funding the non-bank lenders that created the toxic mortgages which the big banks securitized and sold to unwary investors. Paradoxically, banks which were then too big to fail are even larger today.

The article briefly reviews the history of banking from the Founding Fathers to the deregulatory mindset that has been present since 1980. It …

Predicting The Frequency Of Large Public Company Bankruptcies, Patrick Liu

Patrick Liu

From 1980 to 2010, the number of large corporate bankruptcies in the U.S. spanned the gamut from five in 1981 to ninety-seven in 2001. In 2009, there were ninety-one large corporate bankruptcies. Past researchers have used firm-specific characteristics to predict the likelihood of bankruptcy for a given firm. However, limited research exists regarding which factors can explain nationwide fluctuations in the number of large corporate bankruptcies. Because macroeconomic variables pose systematic risk for all firms, macroeconomic variables’ yearly variations could shed light on bankruptcy filings’ yearly variations. Moreover, utilizing lagged variables, using the prior year’s change in a macroeconomic variable, …

The Evolution Of The Supreme Court’S Rule 10b-5 Jurisprudence: Protecting Fraud At The Expense Of Investors, Charles W. Murdock

Charles W. Murdock

Summary: The Evolution of the Supreme Court’s Rule 10b-5 Jurisprudence:

Protecting Fraud at the Expense of Investors

This article traces the evolution of Supreme Court jurisprudence over the past forty years through the prism of Rule 10b-5. It uses four “trilogies” to develop this evolution. At the start of the 1970s, the liberal trend characterized by the Warren Court still prevailed. An implied private cause of action was still in favor and litigators were viewed as private attorneys general, enforcing the securities laws to further the policy of protecting investors.

The expansion of Rule 10b-5 was slowed and more judicial …

Down-Sizing The Little Guy Myth In Legal Definitions, Mirit Eyal-Cohen

Mirit Eyal-Cohen

What is “small” in the eyes of the law? In fact, there is not one standard definition. Current lax legal definitions of firm’s size are inconsistent and overinclusive. They result in data distortion that reinforces favoritism toward small entities as studies on the contribution of small business to the economy are greatly dependent on those studies’ delineation of the term “small.” Therefore, I argue that the current focus on size in legal definitions is a waste of time and money. In this time of huge deficits and rise in economic inequality, a lot of money is being spent based on …

An 'All Of The Above' Theory Of Legal Development (Revised), Larry A. Dimatteo

Larry A DiMatteo

The paper provides a brief background of Nathan Isaacs, his work, and his theory of legal development. Invariably, when analyzing Isaacs’ claim that history proves that law developments in cycles (status to contract to status) the role of Jewish legal history in the development of his thought will play an important role in understanding his theory. Isaacs’ was that rare scholar knowledgeable in the common law, as well as, civil law. A pragmatic realist, as well as a devote Jew. He was a legal historian and very much a man of the present. He possessed a Ph.D. in Economics, and …

Exit, Voice And International Jurisdictional Competition: A Case Study Of The Evolution Of Taiwan’S Regulatory Regime For Outward Investment In Mainland China, 1997-2008, Chang-Hsien Tsai

Chang-hsien (Robert) TSAI

This Article explores the interplay of demand and supply forces in the market for law through international jurisdictional competition led by offshore financial centers. To do so it uses the example of the evolution of a regulatory regime imposed by an onshore jurisdiction, Taiwan, to control outward investment into mainland China (“China-investment”). The argument is that jurisdictional competition brought about by capital mobility or exit will provoke legal changes to prevent the departure of capital when laws reduce the value of remaining within the jurisdiction. The case study is used to examine the extent to which jurisdictional competition fuelled by …

The “Ensuing Loss” Clause In Insurance Policies: The Forgotten And Misunderstood Antidote To Anti-Concurrent Causation Exclusions, Chris French

Christopher C. French

As a result of the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco which destroyed the city, a clause known as the “ensuing loss” clause was created to address concurrent causation situations in which a loss follows both a covered peril and an excluded peril. Ensuing loss clauses appear in the exclusions section of such policies and in essence they provide that coverage for a loss caused by an excluded peril is nonetheless covered if the loss “ensues” from a covered peril. Today, ensuing loss clauses are found in “all risk” property and homeowners policies, which cover all losses except for …

The “Non-Cumulation Clause”: An “Other Insurance” Clause By Another Name, Chris French

Christopher C. French

How long-tail liability claims such as asbestos bodily injury claims and environmental property damage claims are allocated among multiple triggered policy years can result in the shifting of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from one party to another. In recent years, insurers have argued that clauses commonly titled, “Prior Insurance and Non-Cumulation of Liability” (referred to herein as “Non-Cumulation Clauses”), which are found in commercial liability policies, should be applied to reduce or eliminate their coverage responsibilities for long-tail liability claims by shifting their coverage responsibilities to insurers that issued policies in earlier policy years. The insurers’ argument …

Debunking The Myth That Insurance Coverage Is Not Available Or Allowed For Intentional Torts Or Damages, Christopher French

Christopher C. French