Law Commons^™

Building Sector-Based Consensus: A Review Of The Epa's Common Sense Initiative, Cary Coglianese, Laurie K. Allen

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

In the late 1990s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conducted what the agency considered to be a "bold experiment" in regulatory reinvention, bringing representatives from six industrial sectors together with government officials and NGO representatives to forge a consensus on innovations in public policy and business practices. This paper assesses the impact of the agency's "experiment" - called the Common Sense Initiative (CSI) - in terms of the agency's goals of improving regulatory performance and technological innovation. Based on a review of CSI projects across all six sectors, the paper shows how EPA achieved, at best, quite modest ...

Creditors' Ball: The 'New' New Corporate Governance In Chapter 11 , David A. Skeel Jr.

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

In the 1980s and early 1990s, many observers believed that the American corporate bankruptcy laws were desperately inefficient. The managers of the debtor stayed in control as "debtor in possession" after filing for bankruptcy, and they had the exclusive right to propose a reorganization plan for at least the first four months of the case, and often far longer. The result was lengthy cases, deteriorating value and numerous academic proposals to replace Chapter 11 with an alternative regime. In the early years of the new millennium, bankruptcy could not look more different. Cases proceed much more quickly, and they are ...

Corporate Constitutionalism: Antitakeover Charter Provisions As Pre-Commitment, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

Constitutions constitute a polity and create and entrench power. A corporate constitution - the governance choices incorporated in state law and the certificate of incorporation - resembles a political constitution. Delaware law allows parties to create corporations, to endow them with perpetual life, to assign rights and duties to "citizens" (directors and shareholders), to adopt a great variety of governance structures, and to entrench those choices. In this Article, we argue that the decision to endow directors with significant power over decisions whether and how to sell the company is a constitutional choice of governance structure. We then argue that it is ...

Corporate Policy And The Coherence Of Delaware Takeover Law, Richard E. Kihlstrom, Michael L. Wachter

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

This Article presents a model that can be used to explain key elements of Delaware takeover law. By incorporating corporate policy as a key variable in the model, Delaware law’s management discretion rule can be shown to be best suited for maximizing the value of the corporation and the shareholders’ interest under a set of reasonable assumptions. By allowing for occasional market mispricing and the agency costs associated with managing to the market, we demonstrate that a shareholder choice regime would likely lead to suboptimal investment decisions. In our model, managers are assumed to have better information regarding alternative ...

Shareholder Value And Auditor Independence, William W. Bratton

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

This Article questions the practice of framing problems concerning auditors’ professional responsibility inside a principal-agent paradigm. If professional independence is to be achieved, auditors cannot be enmeshed in agency relationships with the shareholders of their audit clients. As agents, the auditors by definition become subject to the principal’s control and cannot act independently. For the same reason, auditors’ duties should be neither articulated in the framework of corporate law fiduciary duty, nor conceived relationally at all. These assertions follow from an inquiry into the operative notion of the shareholder-beneficiary. The Article unpacks the notion of the shareholder and tells ...

Avoiding Moral Bankruptcy, David A. Skeel Jr.

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

No abstract provided.

Is There A Role For Lawyers In Preventing Future Enrons?, Jill E. Fisch, Kenneth M. Rosen

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

Following the collapse of the Enron Corporation, the ethical obligations of corporate attorneys have received increased scrutiny. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, enacted in response to calls for corporate reform, specifically requires the Securities and Exchange Commission to address the lawyer’s role by requiring covered attorneys to “report up” evidence of corporate wrongdoing to key corporate officers, and, in some circumstances, to the board of directors. Failure to “report up” subjects a lawyer to liability under federal law.

This Article argues that the reporting up requirement reflects a second-best approach to corporate governance reform. Rather than focusing on the ...

Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley And Accounting: Rules Versus Principles Versus Rents, William W. Bratton

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

No abstract provided.

Corporate Control Transactions: Introduction, Edward B. Rock, Michael L. Wachter

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

No abstract provided.

The Qualified Legal Compliance Committee: Using The Attorney Conduct Rules To Restructure The Board Of Directors, Jill E. Fisch, Caroline M. Gentile

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

The Securities and Exchange Commission introduced a new corporate governance structure, the qualified legal compliance committee, as part of the professional standards of conduct for attorneys mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. QLCCs are consistent with the Commission’s general approach to improving corporate governance through specialized committees of independent directors. This Article suggests, however, that assessing the benefits and costs of creating QLCCs may be more complex than is initially apparent. Importantly, QLCCs are unlikely to be effective in the absence of incentives for active director monitoring. This Article concludes by considering three ways of increasing these incentives.

How To Fix Wall Street: A Voucher Financing Proposal For Securities Intermediaries, Stephen Choi, Jill E. Fisch

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

No abstract provided.

Defeating Class Certification In Securities Fraud Actions, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

No abstract provided.

The Securities Analyst As Agent: Rethinking The Regulation Of Analysts, Jill E. Fisch, Hillary A. Sale

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

No abstract provided.

The Case For Replealing The Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax, Terrence R. Chorvat, Michael S. Knoll

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

No abstract provided.

Takeover Defense When Financial Markets Are (Only) Relatively Efficient, Michael L. Wachter

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

This paper evaluates the impact of developments in the understanding of asset value pricing for alternative legal standards for takeover defenses: the management discretion and the shareholder rights positions. Both sides place considerable, albeit implicit, reliance on alternative views of the efficiency of financial markets. Developments in finance theory show that when financial markets are only "relatively efficient," stock prices can incorrectly value the corporation at any point in time, at the same time as investors cannot outperform the market on an ongoing basis. I focus on financial market anomalies arising from the failure of the capital asset pricing model ...