Law Commons^™

Is Corporate Criminal Liability Unique?, Sara Sun Beale

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Specific Investment: Explaining Anomalies In "Corporate Law", Margaret M. Blair, Lynn A. Stout

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article has two goals: to praise Professor Robert Clark as a remarkable corporate scholar, and to explore how his work has helped to advance our understanding of corporations and corporate law. Clark wrote his classic treatise at a time when corporate scholarship was dominated by a principal-agent paradigm that viewed shareholders as the principals or sole residual claimants in public corporations and treated directors as shareholders' agents. This view naturally led contemporary scholars to believe that the chief economic problem of interest in corporate law was the "agency cost" problem of getting corporate directors to do what shareholders wanted …

Someplace Between Philosophy And Economics: Legitimacy And Good Corporate Lawyering, Donald C. Langevoort

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay deals with the demands of responsible lawyering when one's client is a corporate or other business entity. I suspect that to most business clients, many of the laws they encounter are mundane and, worse, suspicious in their origins. We would be naive to think that laws always do more good than harm, or even that they are intended to do so. Too often, law in economic and commercial settings is the product of special interest haggling, political grandstanding, or bureaucratic sloth. In its totality, the bulk of commercial and regulatory law probably is mediocre at best. If this …

Capital Requirements In United States Corporation Law, Richard A. Booth Marbury Research Professor Of Law

Faculty Scholarship

This paper focuses on corporation law in the United States as it relates to capital contributions and capital maintenance. In other words, the paper addresses the provisions of corporation law relating to (1) the obligation of investors to contribute to the corporation a specified amount of capital and (2) the obligation of the corporation to maintain a specified amount of capital (and not to pay it back to the stockholders in the form of dividends or payments to repurchase or redeem shares). Traditionally, the amount of capital that must be contributed to and maintained by a corporation is called the …

The Economics Of Limited Liability: An Empirical Study Of New York Law Firms, Kimberly D. Krawiec, Scott Baker

Faculty Scholarship

Since the rapid rise in organizational forms for business associations, academics and practitioners have sought to explain the choice of form rationale. Each form contains its own set of default rules that inevitably get factored into this decision, including the extent to which each individual firm owner will be held personally liable for the collective debts and obligations of the firm. The significance of the differences in these default rules continues to be debated. Many commentators have advanced theories, most notably those based on unlimited liability, profit-sharing, and illiquidity, asserting that the partnership form provides efficiency benefits that outweigh any …

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 …

Discovering Mr. Cook, Margaret A. Leary

Articles

Before I begin to tell you some of what I've learned as I've tried to discover Mr. [William W.] Cook, please ponder two questions: What are your feelings about the Law Quad buildings? Think, for example of the first time you entered the Quad; studying in the Reading Room; seeing the snowy Quad for the first time; and socializing in the Dining Room. You probably have a flood of memories connected to these buildings. The Law School has outgrown them in many respects, but the buildings will always be inspirational. Second, let me ask what you know about William W. …

What Developments In Western Europe Tell Us About American Critiques Of Corporate Criminal Liability, Sara Sun Beale, Adam Safwat

Faculty Scholarship

Although corporate criminal liability has been recognized in the United States for nearly a century, contemporary academic commentators have questioned its legitimacy and argued that it is inferior to its alternatives: civil liability for the corporation and/or criminal liability for individual corporate agents. Other academic critics have attacked the present definitions of corporate criminal liability. In other words, although corporate criminal liability has also had its academic champions, it has been under attack in the United States. The situation in Europe poses a sharp contrast.

A Good Old Habit, Or Just An Old One? Preferential Tax Treatment For Reorganizations, Yariv Brauner

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article proposes to repeal the preferential tax treatment of certain merger and acquisition transactions known as "reorganizations," and tax them like all other sales or exchanges. In the last 80 years this preference has been a cornerstone of our tax system. It is also one of the most stable rules in the tax code. Nevertheless, its normative justification is weak, and has never been rigorously debated in the legal literature. This article rejects the stated rationale for this rules - that such transactions trigger insufficient realization and therefore it is both unfair and impractical to currently tax them. It …

Never Trust A Corporation, William W. Bratton

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I would like to start by noting multitudinous objections to assertions made in Larry Mitchell's Corporate Irresponsibility: America's Newest Export. But I waive these points for purposes of this Symposium. I would prefer to take the occasion to celebrate the book. So I will make two points on the subject of corporate social responsibility on which the book and I stand in complete accord.

The Rule That Isn't A Rule - The Business Judgment Rule, Douglas M. Branson

Articles

On a doctrinal basis, few areas of corporate law are more confused then the duty of care applicable to corporate officials and its handmaiden, the business judgment rule. The tendency of many scholars and practitioners has been to collapse the duty of care into the business judgment rule, as Professor Stuart Cohn pointed out more than a decade ago. The business judgment rule is a separate legal construct that is related to, but separate from, the duty of care and one which protects only proactive and not somnambulant directors and officers. The business judgment rule stays at center stage for …

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 …

Team Production In Business Organizations: An Introduction, Margaret M. Blair, Lynn A. Stout

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

For the past two decades, legal and economic scholarship has tended to assume that the central economic problem addressed by corporation law is getting managers and directors to act as faithful agents for shareholders. There are other important economic problems faced by business firms, however. This article introduces a Symposium that explores one of those alternate economic problems: the problem of "team production". Team production problems can arise whenever three conditions are met: (1) economic production requires the combined inputs of two or more individuals; (2) at least some of these inputs are "team-specific," meaning they have a significantly higher …

On Being A Muslim Corporate Lawyer, Azizah Y. Al-Hibri

Law Faculty Publications

It appears to me that religion subconsciously informs our individual professional practice and that a non-humanitarian form of secularism has quietly shaped our corporate laws. The attendant dissonance causes severe dissatisfaction, and at times even disfunction, in our society. The claim that our present corporate laws are imbued with a non-humanist secularist perspective deserves closer examination from a religious vantage point. Given our constitutional guarantees, our present legal structure appears to place undue burdens on persons of faith in this country. A more just balance between religious and various forms of secular perspectives is, I submit, a worthy goal for …

Proprietary Norms In Corporate Law: An Essay On Reading Gambotto In The United States, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

New Myths And Old Realities: The American Law Institute Faces The Derivative Action, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Nothing in The American Law Institute's (ALI) Principles of Corporate Governance: Analysis and Recommendations (Principles) proved more controversial than the effort to develop fair and balanced standards for the derivative action. Only the topic of corporate takeovers seems to evoke an equally intense level of emotion among corporate lawyers. Not surprisingly then, Part VII (Remedies) of the Principles attracted the same attention from critics that a lightning rod does in a thunderstorm.

Unlike other ALI Restatements, however, the Principles also encountered a professional opposition, which lobbied against its adoption, both inside and outside the ALI, on behalf of various outside …

It Does The Crime But Not The Time: Corporate Criminal Liability In Federal Law, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Changing Perceptions Into Reality: Fiduciary Standards To Match The American Directors’ Monitoring Function, James D. Cox

Faculty Scholarship

This paper describes the historical fiduciary obligations of the American outside director and contrasts those obligations with prevailing obligations in today’s environment of the monitoring director. Special attention is devoted to the role of outside directors when their firm is the target of a takeover. In no other context are the demands on the outside director greater and more strain placed on the monitoring model than in the context of a corporate takeover. The final section of this paper examines the relief modern statutory provisions provide to the director and the monitoring function

A Quarter Century, Not A Raised Voice, Robert G. Lawson, Paul A. Willis

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This dedication was in recognition of Wilbert D. Ham’s retirement from the University of Kentucky College of Law faculty. Wilber D. Ham served on the faculty from 1949 until 1986.

Of Lollipops And Law -- A Proposal For A National Policy Concerning Tender Offer Defenses, Ted J. Fiflis

Publications

Early last year, Mesa Petroleum Company made a tender offer for shares of Unocal Corporation in an effort to take over Unocal. Unocal responded by using the "lollipop" defense, which is a discriminatory issuer self-tender offer. Unocal's use of this defense resulted in huge economic losses to many of Unocal's small shareholders who were not knowledgeable about the ramifications of their participation or non-participation in the tender offer. The Delaware Supreme Court upheld Unocal's use of this defense as an appropriate exercise of business judgment. A federal district court in California refused to strike down the lollipop under federal law …

Tender Offer Litigation And State Law, Mark J. Loewenstein

Publications

The recent spate of hostile takeover battles has focused attention and criticism on the federal securities laws. Most claims of defeated offerors and disappointed shareholders have been based on sections 14(e) and 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The United States Supreme Court, however, has limited such federal remedies and suggested that plaintiffs bring state-law actions for interference with a prospective economic advantage. Professor Loewenstein discusses this tort, which has not been used widely in this context, and reviews the tort's traditional elements, its formulation in the Restatement (Second) of Torts, and its recent treatment by state courts. …

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.