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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 …