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Articles 1 - 19 of 19
Full-Text Articles in Legal Profession
Rethinking The Nature Of The Firm: The Corporation As A Governance Object, Peer Zumbansen
Rethinking The Nature Of The Firm: The Corporation As A Governance Object, Peer Zumbansen
Peer Zumbansen
This Article attempts to bridge two discourses—corporate governance and contract governance. Regarding the latter, a group of scholars has recently set out to develop a more comprehensive research agenda to explore the governance dimensions of contractual relations, highlighting the potential of contract theory to develop a more encompassing theory of social and economic transactions. While a renewed interest in the contribution of economic theory for a concept of contract governance drives one dimension of this research, another part of this undertaking has been to move contract theory closer to theories of social organization. Here, these scholars emphasize the “social” or …
Financial Hospitals: Defending The Fed’S Role As A Market Maker Of Last Resort, José Gabilondo
Financial Hospitals: Defending The Fed’S Role As A Market Maker Of Last Resort, José Gabilondo
José Gabilondo
During the last financial crisis, what should the Federal Reserve (the Fed) have done when lenders stopped making loans, even to borrowers with sterling credit and strong collateral? Because the central bank is the last resort for funding, the conventional answer had been to lend freely at a penalty rate against good collateral, as Walter Bagehot suggested in 1873 about the Bank of England. Acting thus as a lender of last resort, the central bank will keep solvent banks liquid but let insolvent banks go out of business, as they should. The Fed tried this, but when the conventional wisdom …
Salomon Redux: The Moralities Of Business, Allan C. Hutchinson, Ian Langlois
Salomon Redux: The Moralities Of Business, Allan C. Hutchinson, Ian Langlois
Allan C. Hutchinson
In this Essay, we revisit the Salomon case and its related litigation not only from a legal standpoint but also from a broader moral perspective. 4 In the second Part, we offer a detailed context for and account of the Salomon litigation. The third Part focuses on the historical roots of the corporation and the judicial arguments in Salomon. In the fourth Part, we explore the moral and legal consequences of the Salomon decision. Throughout the Essay, our ambition will be not only to give the Salomon case a more contextual and richer spin but also to tackle the relationship …
Gandhi’S Prophecy: Corporate Violence And A Mindful Law For Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel
Gandhi’S Prophecy: Corporate Violence And A Mindful Law For Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel
Nehal A. Patel
AbstractOver thirty years have passed since the Bhopal chemical disaster began,and in that time scholars of corporate social responsibility (CSR) havediscussed and debated several frameworks for improving corporate responseto social and environmental problems. However, CSR discourse rarelydelves into the fundamental architecture of legal thought that oftenbuttresses corporate dominance in the global economy. Moreover, CSRdiscourse does little to challenge the ontological and epistemologicalassumptions that form the foundation for modern economics and the role ofcorporations in the world.I explore methods of transforming CSR by employing the thought ofMohandas Gandhi. I pay particular attention to Gandhi’s critique ofindustrialization and principle of swadeshi (self-sufficiency) …
Some Key Things Entrepreneurs Need To Know About The Law And Lawyers, Lawrence J. Trautman, Anthony Luppino, Malika S. Simmons
Some Key Things Entrepreneurs Need To Know About The Law And Lawyers, Lawrence J. Trautman, Anthony Luppino, Malika S. Simmons
Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.
New business formation is a powerful economic engine that creates jobs. Diverse legal issues are encountered as a start-up entity approaches formation, initial capitalization and fundraising, arrangements with employees and independent contractors, and relationships with other third parties. The endeavors of a typical start-up in the United States will likely implicate many of the following areas of law: intellectual property; business organizations; tax laws; employment and labor laws; securities regulation; contracts and licensing agreements; commercial sales; debtor-creditor relations; real estate law; health and safety laws/codes; permits and licenses; environmental protection; industry specific regulatory laws and approval processes; tort/personal injury, products …
Conflicted Counselors: Retaliation Protections For Attorney-Whistleblowers In An Inconsistent Regulatory Regime, Jennifer M. Pacella
Conflicted Counselors: Retaliation Protections For Attorney-Whistleblowers In An Inconsistent Regulatory Regime, Jennifer M. Pacella
Jennifer M. Pacella, Esq.
Attorneys, especially in-house counsel, are subject to retaliation by employers in much the same way as traditional whistleblowers, often experiencing retaliation and loss of livelihood for reporting instances of wrongdoing about their clients. Although attorney-whistleblowing undoubtedly invokes ethical concerns, attorneys who “appear and practice” before the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) are required by federal law to act as internal whistleblowers under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (“SOX”) and report evidence of material violations of the law within the organizations that they represent. An attorney’s failure to comply with these obligations will result in SEC-imposed civil penalties and disciplinary action. Recent federal …
On The Rise Of Shareholder Primacy, Signs Of Its Fall, And The Return Of Managerialism (In The Closet), Lynn Stout
On The Rise Of Shareholder Primacy, Signs Of Its Fall, And The Return Of Managerialism (In The Closet), Lynn Stout
Lynn A. Stout
In their 1932 opus "The Modern Corporation and Public Property," Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means famously documented the evolution of a new economic entity—the public corporation. What made the public corporation “public,” of course, was that it had thousands or even hundreds of thousands of shareholders, none of whom owned more than a small fraction of outstanding shares. As a result, the public firm’s shareholders had little individual incentive to pay close attention to what was going on inside the firm, or even to vote. Dispersed shareholders were rationally apathetic. If they voted at all, they usually voted to approve …
Enduring Design For Business Entities, William E. Foster
Enduring Design For Business Entities, William E. Foster
William E Foster
The success or failure of an institution may hinge on some of the earliest decisions of its founders. In constitutional design literature, endurance is a widely accepted drafting objective. Indeed, constitutional endurance is positively associated with prosperous and stable societies. Like drafters of constitutions, business organizers have almost innumerable objectives for their enterprises, and attorneys drafting organizational documents must take into account these myriad goals. Oftentimes the drafting process fails to fully address some of the most important of these aims and results in suboptimal structures that lack predictability and reliability. This article looks specifically at small business organizations and …
The Citizen Shareholder: Modernizing The Agency Paradigm To Reflect How And Why A Majority Of Americans Invest In The Market, Anne Tucker
Anne Tucker
This Article examines corporate law from the perspective of personal investment and discusses the economic realities of modern investments in order to understand the role of shareholders within the agency paradigm. Corporate law, its scholars, and suggested reforms traditionally focus on the internal organization of the corporation. For example, agency principles inform corporate law by acknowledging a potential conflict of interest between the managers and shareholders of a corporation. Reforms such as increased shareholder voting rights and proxy access, which seek to give shareholders a more direct means to make their interests known to managers, illustrate corporate law’s focus on …
Limits Of Disclosure, Steven M. Davidoff, Claire A. Hill
Limits Of Disclosure, Steven M. Davidoff, Claire A. Hill
Steven Davidoff Solomon
One big focus of attention, criticism, and proposals for reform in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis has been securities disclosure. Many commentators have emphasized the complexity of the securities being sold, arguing that no one could understand the disclosure. Some observers have noted that disclosures were sometimes false or incomplete. What follows these issues, to some commentators, is that, whatever other lessons we may learn from the crisis, we need to improve disclosure. How should it be improved? Commentators often lament the frailties of human understanding, notably including those of everyday retail investors—people who do not understand or …
Intermediaries Revisited: Is Efficient Certification Consistent With Profit Maximization?, Jonathan M. Barnett
Intermediaries Revisited: Is Efficient Certification Consistent With Profit Maximization?, Jonathan M. Barnett
Jonathan M Barnett
Private certification mechanisms are a key component of the regulatory infrastructure in the financial sector and other commercial settings. It is generally assumed that certification intermediaries have profit-based incentives to deliver accurate information to the certified market. But this view does not account for repeated failures in certification markets. Those failures can be explained by an inherent defect in the incentive structure of certification intermediaries: entry barriers both support and undermine the consistent supply of accurate information to the certified market. Certification markets tend to converge on a handful of providers protected by switching costs, product opacity and reputational noise. …
Certification Drag: The Opinion Puzzle And Other Transactional Curiosities, Jonathan Barnett
Certification Drag: The Opinion Puzzle And Other Transactional Curiosities, Jonathan Barnett
Jonathan M Barnett
The law-and-economics literature typically depicts certification intermediaries, such as law firms, auditors, underwriters, investment banks and rating agencies, as socially valuable market participants who ameliorate informational asymmetries that would otherwise distort pricing or transaction structures. This standard view is incomplete. Using the example of the “closing opinion”, a third-party legal opinion commonly delivered at the consummation of a variety of business transactions, I argue that intermediaries, even when operating under substantially competitive conditions and in sophisticated market settings, may supply widely consumed certification products that fail to mitigate informational asymmetries while increasing transaction costs. Based on the highly qualified language …
Remembering George Michaely, Lawrence J. Trautman, Stanley Sporkin, John A. Dudley
Remembering George Michaely, Lawrence J. Trautman, Stanley Sporkin, John A. Dudley
Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.
This short essay is a memorial tribute about George P. Michaely, Jr. (1926 to 2014). After graduating from both the University of Notre Dame and its law school, he began his legal career, serving for approximately seven years as attorney in the Office of General Counsel. He was then appointed Chief Counsel of the Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance, where he served for approximately the next four years and was responsible for advising the Commission and the public concerning the interpretation of the statutory provisions and rules relating to the registration provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the …
The Evolution Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Changing Interpretations Of The Dmca And Future Implications For Copyright Holders, Hillary A. Henderson
The Evolution Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Changing Interpretations Of The Dmca And Future Implications For Copyright Holders, Hillary A. Henderson
Hillary A Henderson
Copyright law rewards an artificial monopoly to individual authors for their creations. This reward is based on the belief that, by granting authors the exclusive right to reproduce their works, they receive an incentive and means to create, which in turn advances the welfare of the general public by “promoting the progress of science and useful arts.” Copyright protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or …
Will Law Firms Go Public?, Roberta S. Karmel
Will Law Firms Go Public?, Roberta S. Karmel
Roberta S. Karmel
Law in the United States is a big business and big law firms are a global business. Currently, under rules of the American Bar Association (ABA) and most states law, firms are not allowed either to include non-lawyers as partners or accept equity investments from non-lawyers. This Article will argue that (even if law firms retain the form of partnerships) they eventually will accept investments from third parties, and possibly even go public, but this development could lead to a loss of professionalism, as it has with other industries, and could also lead to the end of self-regulation. Among the …
The Law Of Corporate Purpose, David Yosifon
The Law Of Corporate Purpose, David Yosifon
David G. Yosifon
Delaware corporate law requires corporate directors to manage firms for the benefit of shareholders, and not for any other constituency. Delaware jurists have been clear about this in their case law, and they are not coy about it in extra-judicial settings, such as speeches directed at law students and practicing members of the corporate bar. Nevertheless, the reader of leading corporate law scholarship is continually exposed to the scholarly assertion that the law is ambiguous or ambivalent on this point, or even that case law affirmatively empowers directors to pursue non-shareholder interests. It is shocking, and troubling, for corporate law …
Corporate Indemnification And Advancement Provisions, Good Faith, And The Responsibility Of Corporate Attorneys To Protect The Corporation From Misconduct, Markena Diane Peavy
Corporate Indemnification And Advancement Provisions, Good Faith, And The Responsibility Of Corporate Attorneys To Protect The Corporation From Misconduct, Markena Diane Peavy
Markena D. Peavy
The last decade of corporate scandals has exposed that corporations are vulnerable to corruption and exploitation, which has significant and lasting effects on the national and global economy. This article examines the corporate attorney’s responsibility to serve as “gatekeeper” for the corporation, primarily in circumstances where the interests of corporate officials and the interests of the corporation are in direct conflict, and Section 145 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which governs the indemnification and advancement rights of corporate officers and the confines of the corporation’s power to confer such rights. Delaware courts have long established that indemnification is to …
Where Did My Privilege Go? Congress And Its Discretion To Ignore The Attorney-Client Privilege, Don Berthiaume, Jeffrey Ansley
Where Did My Privilege Go? Congress And Its Discretion To Ignore The Attorney-Client Privilege, Don Berthiaume, Jeffrey Ansley
Don R Berthiaume
“The right to counsel is too important to be passed over for prosecutorial convenience or executive branch whimsy. It has been engrained in American jurisprudence since the 18th century when the Bill of Rights was adopted... However, the right to counsel is largely ineffective unless the confidential communications made by a client to his or her lawyer are protected by law.”[1] So said Senator Arlen Specter on February 13, 2009, just seven months before Congress chose to ignore the very privilege he lauded. Why then, if the right to counsel is as important as Senator Specter articulated, does Congress maintain …
Just The Facts: Solving The Corporate Privilege Waiver Dilemma, Don R. Berthiaume
Just The Facts: Solving The Corporate Privilege Waiver Dilemma, Don R. Berthiaume
Don R Berthiaume
How can corporations provide “just the facts” — which are, in fact, not privileged — without waiving the attorney client privilege and work product protection? This article argues for an addition to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure based upon Rule 30(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which allows civil litigants to issue a subpoena to an organization and cause them to “designate one or more officers, directors, or managing agents, or designate other persons who consent to testify on its behalf … about information known or reasonably available to the organization.”[6] Why should we look to Fed. …