Jurisprudence Commons^™

The Irrational Actor In The Ceo Suite: Implications For Corporate Governance, Renee M. Jones

Renee Jones

This Article challenges corporate governance theorists’ standard assumptions regarding the rationality of business leaders. It reviews scholarly research that documents the presence of irrational actors among senior corporate managers and considers the impact these executives might have on corporations and society. The Article focuses analysis on psychological literature that explores why risk-related decision-making often goes wrong.

Research shows that many individuals have a dysfunctional approach to risk that leads them to engage in self-destructive conduct. A non-trivial number of individuals with problematic personality traits work at high levels of major corporations where they have the capacity to cause significant harm. …

203 N. Lasalle Five Years Later: Answers To The Open Questions, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 61 (2004), Paul B. Lewis

Paul Lewis

No abstract provided.

Directors’ Legal Duties And Csr: Prohibited, Permitted Or Prescribed In Contemporary Corporate Law?, Benedict Sheehy, Donald Feaver

Benedict Sheehy

Abstract: The interaction between CSR obligations and directors’ legal duties is seriously under examined. This article addresses that lack by examining directors’ duties in case law and legislation across the major commonwealth countries and the USA. It provides an analysis of leading cases and examines how they deal with the issues of the shareholder primacy doctrine, corporate legal theory, CSR and directors’ duties. The article reviews fiduciary relations and duties, analyses the directors’ duties to exercise power in the best interests of the company as a whole and for proper purposes. As this area of law is highly contested there …

Corporate Social Responsibility In A Remedy-Seeking Society: A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Written for the Chapman Law Review Symposium on “What Can Law & Economics Teach Us About the Corporate Social Responsibility Debate?,” this Article applies the lessons of public choice theory to examine corporate social responsibility. The Article adopts a broad definition of corporate social responsibility activism to include both (1) those efforts that seek to convince corporations to voluntarily take into account corporate social responsibility in their own decision-making, and (2) the efforts to alter the legal landscape and expand legal obligations of corporations beyond traditional notions of harm and duty so as to force corporations to invest in interests …

Corporate Governance Reform In A Time Of Crisis, Christopher M. Bruner

Christopher M. Bruner

In this article I argue that crisis-driven corporate governance reform efforts in the United States and the United Kingdom that aim to empower shareholders are misguided, and offer an explanation of why policymakers in each country have reacted to the financial crisis as they have. I first discuss the risk incentives of shareholders and managers in financial firms, and examine how excessive leverage and risk-taking in pursuit of short-term returns for shareholders led to the crisis. I then describe the far greater power and centrality that U.K. shareholders have historically possessed relative to their U.S. counterparts, and explore historical and …

Good Faith In Revlon-Land, Christopher M. Bruner

Christopher M. Bruner

The Delaware Supreme Court has set a very high hurdle for plaintiffs challenging directors' good faith in the sale of a company. In Lyondell Chemical Company v. Ryan, the court held that unconflicted directors could be found to have breached the good faith component of their duty of loyalty in the transactional context only if they "knowingly and completely failed to undertake," and "utterly failed to attempt" to discharge their duties. In this essay I argue that the Lyondell standard effectively imports into the transactional context the exacting standard previously applied in the oversight context — a move clearly aimed …

Reassessing Corporate Personhood In The Wake Of Occupy Wall Street, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

This article is about corporate personhood, discussed on the backdrop of class consciousness and criticisms of capital generated, in large part, by the recent and continuing Occupy Movements. I am at first concerned with articulating the evolving jurisprudence of corporate personhood as developed in the Supreme Court of the United States. Combined with this doctrinal approach, I offer a Marxist criticism of corporate personhood jurisprudence that culminates in a discussion of the Occupy Movements' logic of resistance to corporate domination in the United States' law and policy. First, I discuss the role Marxist criticism has played in legal discourse and …

Fiduciary Relationships Are Not Contracts, Scott Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

No abstract provided.

Legal Mechanization Of Corporate Social Responsibility Through Alien Tort Statute Litigation: A Response To Professor Branson With Some Supplemental Thoughts, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Response argues that as ATS jurisprudence “matures” or becomes more sophisticated, the legitimate limits of the law regress. The further expansion within the corporate defendant pool – attempting to pin liability on parent, great grandparent corporations and up to the top – raises the stakes and complexity of ATS litigation. The corporate social responsibility discussion raises three principal issues about how a moral corporation lives its life: how a corporation chooses its self-interest versus the interests of others, when and how it should help others if control decisions may harm the shareholder owners, and how far the corporation must …

Requirements Of A Valid Islamic Marriage Vis-À-Vis Requirements Of A Valid Customary Marriage In Nigeria, Olanike Sekinat Odewale Mrs

Olanike Sekinat Adelakun

"That Man Is You!" The Juristic Person And Faithful Love, Scott T. Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

No abstract provided.

Devilry, Complicity, And Greed: Transitional Justice And Odious Debt, David C. Gray

David C. Gray

The doctrine of odious debts came into its full in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century to deal with the financial injustices of colonialism and its stalking horse, despotism. The basic rule, as articulated by Alexander Sack in 1927, is that debts incurred by an illegitimate regime that neither benefit nor have the consent of the people of a territory are personal to the regime and are subject to unilateral recision by a successor government. While the traditional doctrine focused on the nature and circumstances of individual debts, it has been expanded in recent years, moving the focus from the …

The Seduction Of Lydia Bennet: Toward A General Theory Of Society, Marriage, And The Family, Scott T. Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

This article sketches the foundation for a general theory of society. Rejecting portrayals that make society a field of exploitation and dominance, it proposes instead an account that locates the foundation of society in its service of certain basic goods. Society is a kind of friendship. It is to be defined based on the goods of friendship and the projects that serve those goods. Its elements, including those of obligation, office, shame, and rehabilitation, further those goods. The society that emerges from this account is a "society of life." This article also proposes the concept of "components of society," reflecting …

Marriage And The Ethics Of Office, Scott T. Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

This Article alms to retrieve the neglected concept of the "office," as in "the judicial office" or "corporate officer" or the"office of deacon or lector." It aims to present a thorough account of what that term means. It inquires into the ethics of office, advancing the thesis that to hold and exercise office is a good thing, not only in the obvious instrumental ways-it serves a function and it gets results-but also as a part of the "final," non instrumental good of the officeholder and even, in some arrangements, of the recipient of the officeholder's services. Office is an aspect …

Marriage And The Good Of Obligation, Scott T. Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

Marriage is obligatory. This is not to say, of course, that bachelorhood must be avoided or that everyone ought to get married. The point, rather, is that those who do wed form a relationship which embraces obligation as a fundamental component ("commitment norms," as Professor Elizabeth Scott has put it). This article aims to show why this is a good thing, and fundamentally so. Marriage and other affiliations, it seems, may involve obligation in two basic ways. The first way is instrumentally. The projects of married life require long-term commitment and fixity of purpose: raising children and paying off the …

"True Human Community": Catholic Social Thought, Aristotelian Ethics, And The Moral Order Of The Business Company, Scott T. Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

No abstract provided.

The Failure Of The Freedom-Based And Utlilitarian Arguments For Assisted Suicide, Scott T. Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

In recent years, numerous initiatives have been launched to promote physician-assisted suicide. Numerous statutes have been proposed, and one (in Oregon) has been enacted. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit were recently persuaded to recognize constitutionally protected rights to assisted suicide, although their decisions have been reversed by the Supreme Court. An international organization called the World Federation of Right-to-Die Societies furthers such efforts in other countries. The two most common justifications for such initiatives are that assisted suicide enhances freedom or liberty, and that …

The Model Physician-Assisted Suicide Act And Jurisprudence Of Death, Scott T. Fitzgibbon, Kwan Kew Lai

Scott T. FitzGibbon

Your State has, let us suppose, a physician in one of its university-affiliated hospitals who is an admirer of Dr. Kevorkian, or a member of the Hemlock Society. The date is a year from now-December 1997. Your State has adopted the Model State Act to Authorize and Regulate Physician-Assisted Suicide (the "Act"). You now have an unexpected interest in the effects of the Act. A friend or a relative-your eighteen-year-old daughter or your nineteen-year-old younger brother or your fifty-five-year-old father--has approached a hospital seeking counseling and relief. Concerned about the sort of advice your loved one may receive, and concerned …

Opinions Of Counsel: What They Are And Why American Companies Ask For Them, Scott T. Fitzgibbon, Donald W. Glazer

Scott T. FitzGibbon

Legal opinions - formal letters of legal advice delivered by counsel in financial transactions - are a feature of the American legal scene. They have also gained wide acceptance abroad. This article describes the standard legal opinion in an American financing and describe its uses and importance to an American lawyer. It also contains suggestions for interpreting and analyzing legal opinions.

Legal Opinions In Financial Transactions: Their Purpose And Interpretation, Scott T. Fitzgibbon, Donald W. Glazer

Scott T. FitzGibbon

No abstract provided.

Opinions Of Counsel In Corporate Transactions: Opinions On Compliance With The Company's Charter, By-Laws, And Contractual Obligations, Scott T. Fitzgibbon, Donald W. Glazer

Scott T. FitzGibbon

The opinion delivered by company counsel at the closing of a corporate transaction typically contains a clause that addresses compliance by the company with its charter, by-laws and contractual obligations. One form of opinion confirms that execution and delivery by the company of the agreement in question and performance by the company of its obligations under the agreement will not conflict with or result in a breach of or default under the company's charter, by-laws or specified contracts. Another form of opinion focuses more broadly on all of the company's activities. This alternative opinion, often requested and often, with good …

Legal Opinions In Corporate Transactions: Opinions Relating To Security Interests In Personal Property, Scott T. Fitzgibbon, Donald W. Glazer

Scott T. FitzGibbon

No abstract provided.

Legal Opinions In Corporate Transactions: The Opinion On Agreements And Instruments, Scott T. Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

No abstract provided.

Legal Opinions On Secondary Sales Of Stock, Scott T. Fitzgibbon, Donald W. Glazer

Scott T. FitzGibbon

[Later versions appear in Columbia Business Law Review, 1988, no.1:149-160, and in Business Opinions, 335-77. New York, Practicing Law Institute, 1988.]

Legal Opinions In Corporate Transactions: The Opinion That Stock Is Duly Authorized, Validly Issues, Fully Paid And Nonassessable, Scott T. Fitzgibbon, Donald W. Glazer

Scott T. FitzGibbon

[Also appears in Opinion Letters of Counsel 1987, 377-412. New York: Practicing Law Institute, 1987.]

Legal Opinions On Incorporation, Good Standing, And Qualification To Do Business, Scott T. Fitzgibbon, Donald W. Glazer

Scott T. FitzGibbon

[Also appears in Washington and Lee University Law Review 43 (Summer 1986): 240-275, and in Opinion Letters of Counsel 1987, 313-334, New York: Practising Law Institute, 1987, and in Business Opinions, 237-275, New York: Practising Law Institute, 1988.]

What Is A Security? -- A Redefinition Based On Eligibility To Participate In The Financial Markets, Scott T. Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

No abstract provided.