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Unconscionability And Consent In Corporate Law (A Comment On Cunningham), Kent Greenfield Jan 2012

Unconscionability And Consent In Corporate Law (A Comment On Cunningham), Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

Lawrence Cunningham has written an insightful and persuasive article calling on courts to apply the contract-law doctrine of unconscionability in evaluating executive compensation. According to Cunningham, this additional doctrinal tool will allow courts to engage in genuine and meaningful oversight of excessive compensation. He argues that such oversight is valuable because existing corporate-law doctrine too often prompts courts to defer too much and too often to management’s decisions. Cunningham’s argument is modest yet impactful. It is modest in that it simply proposes that courts take account of a well-established area of contract law to analyze and evaluate the compensation contracts …


The Impact Of "Going Private" On Corporate Stakeholders, Kent Greenfield Nov 2011

The Impact Of "Going Private" On Corporate Stakeholders, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

As capital markets in the United States increasingly "go private," it is unclear how the privatization of corporate finance will affect non-shareholder stakeholders of firms, most centrally employees, communities, and the environment. Some scholars and public policy experts believe that concern for such stakeholders should not hold any relevance in the discussion of corporate law in general, and thus may be presumed to believe the same about a conversation about privatization. In such a view, these concerns lie outside the realm of corporate governance law; they therefore should be of no great moment in the debate over whether public policy …


A Bridle, A Prod And A Big Stick: An Evaluation Of Class Actions, Shareholder Proposals And The Ultra Vires Doctrine As Methods For Controlling Corporate Behavior, Adam Sulkowski, Kent Greenfield Nov 2011

A Bridle, A Prod And A Big Stick: An Evaluation Of Class Actions, Shareholder Proposals And The Ultra Vires Doctrine As Methods For Controlling Corporate Behavior, Adam Sulkowski, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

Written for the recent conference at St. John’s University Law School on “People of Color, Women, and the Public Corporation,” this paper evaluates recently applied methods of influencing corporate behavior on employment practices and recommends that a dormant legal doctrine be revitalized and added to the “tool box” of activists and concerned shareholders. The methods of influencing corporate behavior that are evaluated include class action lawsuits and shareholder proposals to amend corporate policy. In both contexts, there are procedural hurdles to achieving success. Even when success is achieved, there are limits to the actual changes in organizational behavior that result. …


The Place Of Workers In Corporate Law, Kent Greenfield Nov 2011

The Place Of Workers In Corporate Law, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

This article critiques the low place of workers within corporate law doctrine. Corporate law, as it is traditionally taught, is primarily about shareholders, boards of directors, and managers, and the relationships among them. This is despite the fact that workers provide an essential input to a corporation's productive activities, and that the success of the business enterprise quite often turns on the success of the relationship between the corporation and those who are employed by it. Black letter corporate law requires directors to place the interests of shareholders above the interests of all other "stakeholders," including workers. This article analyzes …


New Principles For Company Law, Kent Greenfield Jun 2007

New Principles For Company Law, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.