Emerging Technologies And Perfection Of Security Interests: A Financial University Of Uncertainty, 2024 Brooklyn Law School
Emerging Technologies And Perfection Of Security Interests: A Financial University Of Uncertainty, Elizabeth M. Wagenbach
Brooklyn Law Review
Since the founding of Bitcoin in 2009, digital assets, such as cryptocurrency, have exploded in popularity. Cryptocurrency has been associated with stories of immense profit and immense loss. The lucky transactors have been able to capitalize on the price fluctuations of cryptocurrency, while the unlucky transactors became victims of the same volatility, losing tremendous amounts of money. The novelty and ingenuity of cryptocurrency has been coupled with mass confusion to transactors and regulators alike. These early days of cryptocurrency have been characterized by a sort of regulatory tug of war that is a direct result of confusion of what cryptocurrency …
Commercially Reasonable Sales In The 21st Century, 2024 Ohio Northern University
Commercially Reasonable Sales In The 21st Century, David Gray Carlson
Ohio Northern University Law Review
No abstract provided.
Shareholder Primacy Versus Shareholder Accountability, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
Shareholder Primacy Versus Shareholder Accountability, William W. Bratton
Seattle University Law Review
When corporations inflict injuries in the course of business, shareholders wielding environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) principles can, and now sometimes do, intervene to correct the matter. In the emerging fact pattern, corporate social accountability expands out of its historic collectivized frame to become an internal subject matter—a corporate governance topic. As a result, shareholder accountability surfaces as a policy question for the first time. The Big Three index fund managers, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, responded to the accountability question with ESG activism. In so doing, they defected against corporate legal theory’s central tenet, shareholder primacy. Shareholder primacy builds …
Public Primacy In Corporate Law, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
Public Primacy In Corporate Law, Dorothy S. Lund
Seattle University Law Review
This Article explores the malleability of agency theory by showing that it could be used to justify a “public primacy” standard for corporate law that would direct fiduciaries to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of the public. Employing agency theory to describe the relationship between corporate management and the broader public sheds light on aspects of firm behavior, as well as the nature of state contracting with corporations. It also provides a lodestar for a possible future evolution of corporate law and governance: minimize the agency costs created by the divergence of interests between management and …
Corporate Law In The Global South: Heterodox Stakeholderism, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
Corporate Law In The Global South: Heterodox Stakeholderism, Mariana Pargendler
Seattle University Law Review
How do the corporate laws of Global South jurisdictions differ from their Global North counterparts? Prevailing stereotypes depict the corporate laws of developing countries as either antiquated or plagued by problems of enforcement and misfit despite formal convergence. This Article offers a different view by showing how Global South jurisdictions have pioneered heterodox stakeholder approaches in corporate law, such as the erosion of limited liability for purposes of stakeholder protection in Brazil and India, the adoption of mandatory corporate social responsibility in Indonesia and India, and the large-scale program of Black corporate ownership and empowerment in South Africa, among many …
Robo-Voting: Does Delegated Proxy Voting Pose A Challenge For Shareholder Democracy?, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
Robo-Voting: Does Delegated Proxy Voting Pose A Challenge For Shareholder Democracy?, John Matsusaka, Chong Shu
Seattle University Law Review
Robo-voting is the practice by an investment fund of mechanically voting in corporate elections according to the advice of its proxy advisor— in effect fully delegating its voting decision to its advisor. We examined over 65 million votes cast during the period 2008–2021 by 14,582 mutual funds to describe and quantify the prevalence of robo-voting. Overall, 33% of mutual funds robo-voted in 2021: 22% with ISS, 4% with Glass Lewis, and six percent with the recommendations of the issuer’s management. The fraction of funds that robo-voted increased until around 2013 and then stabilized at the current level. Despite the sizable …
The Esg Information System, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
The Esg Information System, Stavros Gadinis, Amelia Miazad
Seattle University Law Review
The mounting focus on ESG has forced internal corporate decision-making into the spotlight. Investors are eager to support companies in innovative “green” technologies and scrutinize companies’ transition plans. Activists are targeting boards whose decisions appear too timid or insufficiently explained. Consumers and employees are incorporating companies sustainability credentials in their purchasing and employment decisions. These actors are asking companies for better information, higher quality reports, and granular data. In response, companies are producing lengthy sustainability reports, adopting ambitious purpose statements, and touting their sustainability credentials. Understandably, concerns about greenwashing and accountability abound, and policymakers are preparing for action.
In this …
Stakeholder Governance On The Ground (And In The Sky), 2024 Seattle University School of Law
Stakeholder Governance On The Ground (And In The Sky), Stephen Johnson, Frank Partnoy
Seattle University Law Review
Professor Frank Partnoy: This is a marvelous gathering, and it is all due to Chuck O’Kelley and the special gentleness, openness, and creativity that he brings to this symposium. For more than a decade, he has been open to new and creative ways to discuss important issues surrounding business law and Adolf Berle’s legacy. We also are grateful to Dorothy Lund for co-organizing this gathering.
In introducing Stephen Johnson, I am reminded of a previous Berle, where Chuck allowed me some time to present the initial thoughts that led to my book, WAIT: The Art and Science of Delay. Part …
Stakeholder Capitalism’S Greatest Challenge: Reshaping A Public Consensus To Govern A Global Economy, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
Stakeholder Capitalism’S Greatest Challenge: Reshaping A Public Consensus To Govern A Global Economy, Leo E. Strine Jr., Michael Klain
Seattle University Law Review
The Berle XIV: Developing a 21st Century Corporate Governance Model Conference asks whether there is a viable 21st Century Stakeholder Governance model. In our conference keynote article, we argue that to answer that question yes requires restoring—to use Berle’s term—a “public consensus” throughout the global economy in favor of the balanced model of New Deal capitalism, within which corporations could operate in a way good for all their stakeholders and society, that Berle himself supported.
The world now faces problems caused in large part by the enormous international power of corporations and the institutional investors who dominate their governance. These …
Delegated Corporate Voting And The Deliberative Franchise, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
Delegated Corporate Voting And The Deliberative Franchise, Sarah C. Haan
Seattle University Law Review
Starting in the 1930s with the earliest version of the proxy rules, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has gradually increased the proportion of “instructed” votes on the shareholder’s proxy card until, for the first time in 2022, it required a fully instructed proxy card. This evolution effectively shifted the exercise of the shareholder’s vote from the shareholders’ meeting to the vote delegation that occurs when the share-holder fills out the proxy card. The point in the electoral process when the binding voting choice is communicated is now the execution of the proxy card (assuming the shareholder completes the card …
A Different Approach To Agency Theory And Implications For Esg, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
A Different Approach To Agency Theory And Implications For Esg, Jonathan Bonham, Amoray Riggs-Cragun
Seattle University Law Review
In conventional agency theory, the agent is modeled as exerting unobservable “effort” that influences the distribution over outcomes the principal cares about. Recent papers instead allow the agent to choose the entire distribution, an assumption that better describes the extensive and flexible control that CEOs have over firm outcomes. Under this assumption, the optimal contract rewards the agent directly for outcomes the principal cares about, rather than for what those outcomes reveal about the agent’s effort. This article briefly summarizes this new agency model and discusses its implications for contracting on ESG activities.
Stakeholder Governance As Governance By Stakeholders, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
Stakeholder Governance As Governance By Stakeholders, Brett Mcdonnell
Seattle University Law Review
Much debate within corporate governance today centers on the proper role of corporate stakeholders, such as employees, customers, creditors, suppliers, and local communities. Scholars and reformers advocate for greater attention to stakeholder interests under a variety of banners, including ESG, sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and stakeholder governance. So far, that advocacy focuses almost entirely on arguing for an expanded understanding of corporate purpose. It argues that corporate governance should be for various stakeholders, not shareholders alone.
This Article examines and approves of that broadened understanding of corporate purpose. However, it argues that we should understand stakeholder governance as extending well …
The Need For Corporate Guardrails In U.S. Industrial Policy, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
The Need For Corporate Guardrails In U.S. Industrial Policy, Lenore Palladino
Seattle University Law Review
U.S. politicians are actively “marketcrafting”: the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act collectively mark a new moment of robust industrial policy. However, these policies are necessarily layered on top of decades of shareholder primacy in corporate governance, in which corporate and financial leaders have prioritized using corporate profits to increase the wealth of shareholders. The Administration and Congress have an opportunity to use industrial policy to encourage a broader reorientation of U.S. businesses away from extractive shareholder primacy and toward innovation and productivity. This Article examines discrete opportunities within the …
Capitalism Stakeholderism, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
Capitalism Stakeholderism, Christina Parajon Skinner
Seattle University Law Review
Today’s corporate governance debates are replete with discussion of how best to operationalize so-called stakeholder capitalism—that is, a version of capitalism that considers the interests of employees, communities, suppliers, and the environment alongside (if not before) a company’s shareholders. So much focus has been dedicated to the question of capitalism’s reform that few have questioned a key underlying premise of stakeholder capitalism: that is, that competitive capitalism does not serve these various constituencies and groups. This Essay presents a different view and argues that capitalism is, in fact, the ultimate form of stakeholderism. As such, the Essay urges that the …
Table Of Contents, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review
Seattle University Law Review
Table of Contents
The Structure Of Corporate Law Revolutions, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
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 …
The Limits Of Corporate Governance, 2024 Seattle University School of Law
The Limits Of Corporate Governance, Cathy Hwang, Emily Winston
Seattle University Law Review
What is the purpose of the corporation? For decades, the answer was clear: to put shareholders’ interests first. In many cases, this theory of shareholder primacy also became synonymous with the imperative to maximize shareholder wealth. In the world where shareholder primacy was a north star, courts, scholars, and policymakers had relatively little to fight about: most debates were minor skirmishes about exactly how to maximize shareholder wealth.
Part I of this Essay discusses the shortcomings of shareholder primacy and stakeholder governance, arguing that neither of these modes of governance provides an adequate framework for incentivizing corporations to do good. …
Smart Money For The People: Using Financial Innovation And Technology To Promote Esg, 2023 Duke Law
Smart Money For The People: Using Financial Innovation And Technology To Promote Esg, Frank Emmert
Duke Law & Technology Review
Traditional fiat currencies managed by governments and central banks have had negative impacts on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. Central banks in mature democracies pursue policies that prioritize economic growth and high employment. However, these policies often lead to inflation, eroding the savings and pension funds of average citizens and encouraging risky behavior by banks and entrepreneurs. The pursuit of endless growth is socially and environmentally unsustainable. Leaders in developing countries and dictatorships use expansive monetary policy to maintain their positions, further exacerbating the situation. Convertible fiat currencies moving across borders in untraceable transactions evade regulation and taxation, with …
Table Of Contents, 2023 Seattle University School of Law
Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review
Seattle University Law Review
Table of Contents
Legal Representation And The Metaverse: The Ethics Of Practicing In Multiple Realities, 2023 DePaul University College of Law
Legal Representation And The Metaverse: The Ethics Of Practicing In Multiple Realities, Madeline Brom
DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal
No abstract provided.