Law Commons^™

Integrating Subchapters K And S And Beyond, Walter D. Schwidetzky

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This Article builds upon a similar, lengthier effort that I published in the Tax Lawyer in 2009. While there is overlap, this Article contains much new material. Important case law and tax proposals from the House Ways and Means Committee have come out in the interim. Due to space limitations, unlike my Tax Lawyer effort, this Article attempts to avoid prolixity. It assumes the reader has good knowledge of both Subchapters S and K and the tax entity selection process. If you are not that reader, a review of my Tax Lawyer article or Professor Mann's article in this symposium …

Framing A Purpose For Corporate Law, William W. Bratton

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This article seeks to frame a short statement of purpose for corporate law on which all reasonable observers can agree. The statement, in order to succeed at its intended purpose, must satisfy two strict conditions: first, it must have enough content to be meaningful; second, it must be completely uncontroversial, both descriptively and normatively. The exercise, thus described, involves avoiding the issues that occupy center stage in discussions about corporate law while at the same time highlighting the discussants’ generally held presuppositions. Three closely interconnected issues arise. First, whether the statement of the purpose of corporate law should speak in …

Pass-Through Entity Reform: Is A Major Overhaul Necessary?, Walter D. Schwidetzky

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No abstract provided.

A Court For The One Percent: How The Supreme Court Contributes To Economic Inequality, Michele E. Gilman

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This Article explores the United States Supreme Court’s role in furthering economic inequality. The Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 not only highlighted growing income and wealth inequality in the United States, but also pointed the blame at governmental policies that favor business interests and the wealthy due to their outsized influence on politicians. Numerous economists and political scientists agree with this thesis. However, in focusing ire on the political branches and big business, these critiques have largely overlooked the role of the judiciary in fostering economic inequality. The Court’s doctrine touches each of the major causes of economic inequality, …

When Should Bankruptcy Be An Option (For People, Places Or Things)?, David A. Skeel Jr.

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When many people think about bankruptcy, they have a simple left-to-right spectrum of possibilities in mind. The spectrum starts with personal bankruptcy, moves next to corporations and other businesses, and then to municipalities, states, and finally countries. We assume that bankruptcy makes the most sense for individuals; that it makes a great deal of sense for corporations; that it is plausible but a little more suspect for cities; that it would be quite odd for states; and that bankruptcy is unimaginable for a country.

In this Article, I argue that the left-to-right spectrum is sensible but mistaken. After defining “bankruptcy,” …

Corporate Social Responsibility And The Multinational Enterprise, Constance Z. Wagner

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In this book review, the author critiques Levi’s Children: Coming to Terms with Human Rights in the Global Marketplace by Karl Schoenberger. Schoenberger depicts the struggle by Levi Strauss & Co. to abide by its principles regarding workers’ rights after its decision to relocate some manufacturing operations abroad, an effort that he concludes was ultimately unsuccessful. In exploring this topic, he discusses the human rights issues confronting Levi Strauss & Co. and other U.S. multinationals and the increasing pressure exerted by the public for such companies to operate in a socially responsible manner. Schoenberger’s primary contribution to the growing literature …

A Corporate Right To Privacy, Elizabeth Pollman

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The debate over the scope of constitutional protections for corporations has exploded with commentary on recent or pending Supreme Court cases, but scholars have left unexplored some of the hardest questions for the future, and the ones that offer the greatest potential for better understanding the nature of corporate rights. This Article analyzes one of those questions — whether corporations have, or should have, a constitutional right to privacy. First, the Article examines the contours of the question in Supreme Court jurisprudence and provides the first scholarly treatment of the growing body of conflicting law in the lower courts on …

Bankers And Chancellors, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

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The Delaware Chancery Court recently squared off against the investment banking world with a series of rulings that tie Revlon violations to banker conflicts of interest. Critics charge the Court with slamming down fiduciary principles of self-abnegation in a business context where they have no place or, contrariwise, letting culpable banks off the hook with ineffectual slaps on the wrist. This Article addresses this controversy, offering a sustained look at the banker-client advisory relationship. We pose a clear answer to the questions raised: although this is nominally fiduciary territory, both banker-client relationships and the Chancery Court’s recent interventions are contractually …

Separation Anxiety: A Cautious Endorsement Of The Independent Board Chair, Lisa Fairfax

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This Article critically examines the competing arguments related to splitting the roles of CEO and board chair. Although the campaign for independent board chairs has received increased attention from shareholders and regulators, there has been very little academic analysis of such campaign. This Article seeks to fill this void not only by examining the campaign, but also by assessing its implications in light of the available empirical evidence and normative claims. Based on this assessment, this Article offers two conclusions. First, while there appear to be costs associated with splitting the roles of CEO and board chair, those costs likely …

Symbolic Corporate Governance Politics, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock

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How are we to understand the persistent gap between rhetoric and reality that characterizes so much of corporate governance politics? In this Article, we show that the rhetoric around a variety of high profile corporate governance controversies (including shareholder proposals asking boards to redeem poison pills, proxy access, majority voting in director elections, and shareholder proposals to remove supermajority voting requirements) cannot be justified by the material interests at stake. At the same time, shareholder activists are oddly reluctant to pursue issues that may have a more material impact, such as anti-pill charter provisions or mandatory bylaw amendments. We consider …

Corporate Governance And Social Welfare In The Common Law World, David A. Skeel Jr.

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The newest addition to the spate of recent theories of comparative corporate governance is Corporate Governance in the Common-Law World: The Political Foundations of Shareholder Power, an important new book by Christopher Bruner. Focusing on the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia, Bruner argues that the robustness of the country’s social welfare system is the key determinant of the extent to which its corporate governance is shareholder-centered. This explains why corporate governance is so shareholder-oriented in the United Kingdom, which has universal healthcare and generous unemployment benefits, while shareholders’ powers are more attenuated in the United States, with its …

Harmonizing Choice-Of-Law Rules For International Insolvency Cases: Virtual Territoriality, Virtual Universalism, And The Problem Of Local Interests, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

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This paper explores the potential content and feasibility of a set of harmonized choice of law rules (HICOL Rules) that would apply in insolvency proceedings. It contemplates a main insolvency proceeding opened in a debtor’s center of main interests (“COMI”) and the existence of (or possibility of opening) one or more non-main (or secondary) proceedings. It also contemplates the possibility that an insolvency representative in a main or non-main proceeding may seek and be granted recognition in another state under the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency (codified as Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code in the U.S.) Under HICOL …

Toward A Theory Of Shareholder Leverage, Lisa Fairfax

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On Friday, April 11, and Saturday, April 12, 2014, the UCLA School of Law Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy sponsored a conference on competing theories of corporate governance.

Corporate law and economics scholarship initially relied mainly on agency cost and nexus of contracts models. In recent years, however, various scholars have built on those foundations to construct three competing models of corporate governance: director primacy, shareholder primacy, and team production.

The shareholder primacy model treats the board of directors as agents of the shareholders charged with maximizing shareholder wealth. Scholars such as Lucian Bebchuk working with this …

Value Creation By Business Lawyers: Where Are We And Where Are We Going?, Elizabeth Pollman

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This is a transcript of Professor Elizabeth Pollman’s remarks for the “Value Creation by Business Lawyers in the 21st Century” panel at the 2014 AALS Annual Meeting. The panel commemorated the 30th anniversary of Ronald Gilson’s article, Value Creation by Business Lawyers: Legal Skills and Asset Pricing. Professor Pollman’s remarks examined the influence of the Gilson article and potential areas for future work in light of regulatory and technological changes affecting transactional lawyering as well as the rise of in-house counsel.