Law Commons^™

February 17, 2011: Shari’Ah And Constitutionalism, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Shari’ah and Constitutionalism“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Securities Intermediaries And The Separation Of Ownership From Control, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

The Modern Corporation and Private Property highlighted the evolving separation of ownership and control in the public corporation and the effects of that separation on the allocation of power within the corporation. This essay explores the implications of intermediation for those themes. The article observes that intermediation, by decoupling economic ownership and decision-making authority within the shareholder, creates a second layer of agency issues beyond those identified by Berle and Means. These agency issues are an important consideration in the current debate over shareholder empowerment. The article concludes by considering the hypothetical shareholder construct implicit in the Berle and Means …

Law And The Social Control Of American Capitalism, William J. Novak

Articles

This Essay is part of a larger, ongoing investigation of the role of law in the creation of a modern American state from 1877 to 1932. That project charts the decline of an early nineteenth-century world of local, common law self government (what I called in a previous work a “well-regulated society”) and the rise of a distinctly modern administrative regulatory state in the United States. This new legal-political regime was rooted in three interlinked developments: the centralization of public power; the individualization of private right; and the constitutionalization of the rule of law. Beginning soon after the Civil War, …

On The Many Flavors Of Capitalism Or Reflections On Schumpeter's Ghost, John Henry Schlegel

Journal Articles

Most legal scholars treat capitalism as a genus with one species. The appearance of several books that argue to the contrary suggests that it is sensible to revisit this assumption. Discussion begins by considering the constructed nature of markets, the importance of market systems, and the role of financings as the factor distinguishing capitalism from other forms of a market economy. Thereafter, four articulations of the varieties of capitalism are reviewed: the classic Marxist one, one by a political economist, another by a pair of comparative political scientists, and third by a trio of economists. This review leads to a …

Introduction: Unsettling Questions, Disquieting Stories, Mae Kuykendall, David A. Westbrook

Journal Articles

The Business Law and Narrative Symposium, held at Michigan State University on September 10-11, 2009, brought together nationally known legal scholars, and scholars from other disciplines, to discuss whether and how the institution of the corporation was embedded in social narratives, public stories. This introductory essay reviews the responses of these scholars to the thesis of Kuykendall's article, No Imagination: The Marginal Role of Narrative in Corporate Law. The authors conclude with a hope that corporate law might offer a more literary sensibility by which to make our lives in global capitalism more comprehensible.

March 29, 2008: Secularists And Tibet, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Secularists and Tibet

Just Back From The Human Rights Council, Makau Mutua

Journal Articles

The piece critically looks at the transition from the UN Commission on Human Rights to the UN Human Rights Council in 2006 and questions whether the change is one of substance or form. It argues that the same paralysis that dogged the Commission will continue to afflict the Council because power politics and regional blocs - fueled by the global asymmetries of power - will not go away. The piece also contends that the charge by the West that the Commission was utterly compromised by the Third World was without merit because it was the one forum where developing could …

Stakeholder Governance: A Bad Idea Getting Worse, George W. Dent

Faculty Publications

Calls for a stakeholder voice in corporate governance never end, as evidenced by the Symposium Corporations and Their Communities to which this paper is a contribution. The demise of labor unions and explosion of executive compensation while the income of most Americans has stagnated over the last several years has precipitated cries for remedial action, some of which include stakeholder governance. Although complaints about deepening inequality are just, other remedies should be pursued. The traditional objections to stakeholder governance remain valid: the interests of stakeholder groups clash not only with those of the shareholders but also with each other, and …

We Are All Entrepreneurs Now, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

A funny thing happened to the entrepreneur in legal, business, and social science scholarship. She strayed from her capitalist roots, took on more and more functions that have little to do with starting or running a business, and became wildly popular in the process. Nowadays, "social entrepreneurs" tackle civic problems through innovative methods, "policy entrepreneurs" promote new forms of government action, "norm entrepreneurs" seek to change the way society thinks or behaves, and "moral entrepreneurs" try to alter the boundaries of duty or compassion. "Ethnification entrepreneurs," "polarization entrepreneurs," and other newfangled spinoffs pursue more discrete objectives. Entrepreneurial rhetoric has never …

Capitalism, Social Marginality, And The Rule Of Law's Uncertain Fate In Modern Society, Ahmed A. White

Publications

The rule of law is liberalism's key juridical aspiration. Yet its norms, centered on the principles of legality and legal generality, are being compromised all over the political and legal landscape. For decades, the dominant explanation of this worrying condition has focused mainly on the rise of the welfare state and its apparent incompatibility with the rule of law. But this approach, though shared by a politically diverse range of scholars, is outdated and misconceives the problem. A central function of the modem state has always been to prevent capitalism's inherent tendencies toward social marginalization from devolving into general social …

The Very Uncertain Prospect Of 'Global' Convergence In Corporate Governance, Douglas M. Branson

Articles

Elites in the United States legal academy have been uniform in their prediction of "global" convergence on a single model of governance for large publicly held corporations. That model is, of course, the U.S. model. The evidence, though, is only of some trans Atlantic convergence with an outlier here or there. Moreover, the existing scholarship is culturally and economically insensitive. U.S. style corporate governance, with its requirements for truly independent directors who will confront and remove badly performing CEOs, and which has as an element lawsuits brought by activist shareholders, is simply inappropriate for many cultural settings. Post Confucian and …

Global Capitalism And Nationalist Backlash: The Link Between Markets And Ethnicity, Amy L. Chua

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Official Imaginations: Globalization, Difference, And State-Sponsored Immigration Discourses, Kunal M. Parker

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Removal Of Adam's Rib: The Creation And Polarization Of Male And Female Virtues, Ana M. Novoa

Faculty Articles

Soft virtues, normally associated with women, have been deemed to have no legal, market or public value, and this has caused problems within American society. The devaluation of cooperative and nurturing virtues, coupled with the dangerous myth of independence and self-reliance, and general acceptance of consumption as a positive attribute, have had a profound effect on American society as a whole and, in particular, on general views on the care of children and other dependent members of our society. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the composition and character of the family were very different because the family was not a …

Just A Bigger Fish (Book Review), Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

Shark Tank: Greed, Politics, and the Collapse of Finley, Kumble, One of America’s Largest Law Firms is a non-fiction potboiler written by Kim Isaac Eisler. The story is generally about the decline and fall of an institution instrumental to capitalism that prospered during much of the 1980s. In particular, it is about the decline and fall of men whose hubris and greed make the decline and fall so satisfying to read.

While it would be easy to dismiss the demise of Finley, Kumble, because it was not an old, established “white shoe” law firm, or to analogize it to the …

Breach Of Contract, Damage Measures, And Economic Efficiency, Robert L. Birmingham

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Capitalism, The United States Constitution And The Supreme Court, Part 2, Hugh Evander Willis

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Corporations And The United States Constitution, Hugh Evander Willis

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Capitalism, The United States Constitution And The Supreme Court, Hugh Evander Willis

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Our Economic Problem: The Concentration Of Wealth, Hugh Evander Willis

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Newer Social Scientists Look At Law, Ralph F. Fuchs

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.