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Shareholder Protection Across Time, Brian R. Cheffins, Steven A. Bank, Harwell Wells

Florida Law Review

This Article offers the first systematic attempt to measure the development of shareholder protection in the United States across time. Using three indices developed to measure the relative strength of shareholder protection across nations, this Article evaluates numerically the protections corporate and securities law have offered shareholders from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. It accomplishes this by tracking the rights accorded to shareholders across time under three important sources of corporate law: Delaware and Illinois and the Model Business Corporation Act.

This Article’s novel study yields novel results. First, we find that the protections afforded …