Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

The Structure Of Corporate Law Revolutions, William Savitt

Seattle University Law Review

Since, call it 1970, corporate law has operated under a dominant conception of governance that identifies profit-maximization for stockholder benefit as the purpose of the corporation. Milton Friedman’s essay The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits, published in September of that year, provides a handy, if admittedly imprecise, marker for the coronation of the shareholder-primacy paradigm. In the decades that followed, corporate law scholars pursued an ever-narrowing research agenda with the purpose and effect of confirming the shareholder-primacy paradigm. Corporate jurisprudence followed a similar path, slowly at first and later accelerating, to discover in the precedents and …

A History Of Corporate Law Federalism In The Twentieth Century, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

This Article describes the emergence of corporate law federalism across a long twentieth century. The period begins with New Jersey’s successful initiation of charter competition in 1888 and ends with the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. The federalism in question describes the interrelation of state and federal regulation of corporate internal affairs. This Article takes a positive approach, pursuing no normative bottom line. It makes six observations: (1) the federalism describes a division of subject matter, with internal affairs regulated by the states and securities issuance and trading regulated by the federal government; (2) the federalism is an …

Choice Of Law And The Preponderantly Multistate Rule: The Example Of Successor Corporation Products Liability, Diana Sclar

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Most state rules of substantive law, whether legislative or judicial, ordinarily adjust rights and obligations among local parties with respect to local events. Conventional choice of law methodologies for adjudicating disputes with multistate connections all start from an explicit or implicit assumption of a choice between such locally oriented substantive rules. This article reveals, for the first time, that some state rules of substantive law ordinarily adjust rights and obligations with respect to parties and events connected to more than one state and only occasionally apply to wholly local matters. For these rules I use the term “nominally domestic rules …

Redefining Roles And Duties Of The Transactional Lawyer: A Narrative Approach, Lori D. Johnson

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Article posits that narrative theory can assist the transactional lawyer in walking this tightrope effectively and ethically.

Specifically, this Article proceeds to show that the use of narrative techniques, specifically those proposed by Walter Fisher, can assist transactional lawyers: (1) in understanding their clients’ goals more fully; (2) in more effectively advancing their clients’ goals through persuasion; and (3) in creating complete, holistic documents to govern the proposed deal. As such, the appropriate use of narrative techniques and understanding of narrative theory can enhance the skills of transactional lawyers, and improve client outcomes.

This Article proceeds in three …

Frey, Morris, Jr. & Choper: Cases And Materials On Corporations, Stanley Siegel

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Cases and Materials on Corporations By Alexander H. Frey, C. Robert Morris, Jr., and Jesse H. Choper