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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Adolf Berle During The New Deal: The Brain Truster As An Intellectual Jobber, Robert Thompson
Adolf Berle During The New Deal: The Brain Truster As An Intellectual Jobber, Robert Thompson
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Thirty-seven year old law professor Adolf Berle had a career year in 1932. His book published that year, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (written with Gardiner Means), framed the fundamental twentieth century change in understanding modern corporations. Berle’s exchange with Merrick Dodd on the purpose of the corporation that played out that spring on the pages of the Harvard Law Review launched a still fierce debate over the role of shareholders and other stakeholders. His service as a brain truster for Franklin Roosevelt during the fall election gave voice to the transformative economic policies of the New Deal. This …
Welfare, Dialectic, And Mediation In Corporate Law, William W. Bratton
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 …
Berle And Means Reconsidered At The Century's Turn, William W. Bratton
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 …