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Full-Text Articles in Business

The Oligarchic Courthouse: Jurisdiction, Corporate Power, And Democratic Decline, Helen Hershkoff, Luke Norris Oct 2023

The Oligarchic Courthouse: Jurisdiction, Corporate Power, And Democratic Decline, Helen Hershkoff, Luke Norris

Michigan Law Review

Jurisdiction is foundational to the exercise of judicial power. It is precisely for this reason that subject matter jurisdiction, the species of judicial power that gives a court authority to resolve a dispute, has today come to the center of a struggle between corporate litigants and the regulatory state. In a pronounced trend, corporations are using jurisdictional maneuvers to manipulate forum choice. Along the way, they are wearing out less-resourced parties, circumventing hearings on the merits, and insulating themselves from laws that seek to govern their behavior. Corporations have done so by making creative arguments to lock plaintiffs out of …


The Judicial System’S Unjust Relationship With Attorney-Client Privilege: How Judges Knowingly (And Erroneously) Abrogate Important Contractual Arrangements In Corporate Transactions, Edward S. Adams Dec 2022

The Judicial System’S Unjust Relationship With Attorney-Client Privilege: How Judges Knowingly (And Erroneously) Abrogate Important Contractual Arrangements In Corporate Transactions, Edward S. Adams

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

A Delaware court has recently recognized the need to enforce contracts that delineate where the attorney-client privilege rests after an asset transfer. This Article will argue that courts across the country should recognize the important and legitimate reasons for this type of decision. Part I will review how the attorney-client privilege functions for corporations and how courts respect the importance of the privilege in other contexts. Part II will review the fundamental corporate changes in which these questions can arise and situations in which courts choose to recognize the importance of protecting the attorney-client privilege. Part III will argue that …


Environmental Governance By Contract: The Growing Role Of Supply Chain Contracting, Michael P. Vandenburgh, Patricia A. Moore Sep 2022

Environmental Governance By Contract: The Growing Role Of Supply Chain Contracting, Michael P. Vandenburgh, Patricia A. Moore

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Corporate net zero climate commitments and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies have the potential to bypass barriers to international, national, and subnational government action on climate change and other environmental issues. This Article presents the results of a new empirical study that demonstrates the remarkably widespread use of environmental supply chain contracting requirements. The study finds that roughly 80% of the ten largest firms in seven global sectors include environmental requirements in supply chain contracting, a substantial increase over the 50% reported by a comparable study fifteen years ago. The Article concludes that the prevalence of environmental supply chain …


Is Corporate Law Nonpartisan?, Ofer Eldar, Gabriel V. Rauterberg Jun 2022

Is Corporate Law Nonpartisan?, Ofer Eldar, Gabriel V. Rauterberg

Articles

Only rarely does the United States Supreme Court hear a case with fundamental implications for corporate law. In Carney v. Adams, however, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to address whether the State of Delaware’s requirement of partisan balance for its judiciary violates the First Amendment. Although the Court disposed of the case on other grounds, Justice Sotomayor acknowledged that the issue “will likely be raised again.” The stakes are high because most large businesses are incorporated in Delaware and thus are governed by its corporate law. Former Delaware governors and chief justices lined up to defend the state’s “nonpartisan” …


Corporations As Private Regulators, Wentong Zheng Apr 2022

Corporations As Private Regulators, Wentong Zheng

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The growing trend of corporations imposing restrictions on suppliers, contractors, and customers beyond the requirements of existing laws requires rethinking the nature and impact of corporations’ private regulatory power. This trend, which this Article refers to as “Corporations as Private Regulators” (CPR), represents a paradigmatic shift in how corporations participate in the making of public policies. This Article conceptualizes the corporate CPR power as the exercise of a right of refusal to deal with counterparties. This right of refusal could be theorized as a new form of property right, whose allocation has important implications for both rights and wealth. The …


Shareholder Engagement In The United States, Vikramaditya S. Khanna Jan 2022

Shareholder Engagement In The United States, Vikramaditya S. Khanna

Book Chapters

Shareholder voting and engagement in the US have undergone substantial changes over the last 50 years. They have moved from being relatively sleepy issues to those that trigger insomnia in even the most hardened executives. The changes in the ownership structure of US publicly traded firms are probably the most important reason for the shift, but so too are rule changes that have facilitated greater shareholder activism. This chapter explores these developments while describing the rules of the road for shareholder voting in the US by focusing on Delaware jurisprudence and changes in US federal securities regulations. It also examines …


Controlling Externalities: Ownership Structure And Cross-Firm Externalities, Dhammika Dharmapala, Vikramaditya S. Khanna Aug 2021

Controlling Externalities: Ownership Structure And Cross-Firm Externalities, Dhammika Dharmapala, Vikramaditya S. Khanna

Law & Economics Working Papers

In recent years, debates over the social purpose of corporations have taken center stage amidst rising concern about externalities (such as those associated with climate change and harmful speech) generated by firms. A key motivation is the claim that government regulation and liability regimes appear not to be functioning sufficiently well to force firms to internalize these externalities. There is thus rising interest in exploring alternative mechanisms. In particular, a rapidly growing body of scholarship argues that index funds increasingly approximate diversified “universal owners” with incentives to maximize portfolio value (and thus to internalize cross-firm externalities). However, much of this …


Introduction To The Symposium On Soft And Hard Law On Business And Human Rights, Steven R. Ratner Jun 2020

Introduction To The Symposium On Soft And Hard Law On Business And Human Rights, Steven R. Ratner

Articles

This symposium turns to a major debate within a field of international law that has moved from the periphery to center stage in just a few decades—business and human rights, or BHR: Can and should international law's approach to the human rights impacts of business activity shift from today's mostly soft-law framework to a multilateral treaty regime? While advocates for and against such a treaty debate this point at the UN Human Rights Council and other venues, this symposium examines the problem from four theoretical perspectives. Each contribution offers insights for practitioners and scholars alike, but they suggest no easy …


The Hague Rules On Business And Human Rights Arbitration, Bruno Simma, Diane Desierto, Martin Doe Rodriguez, Jan Eijsbouts, Ursula Kriebaum, Pablo Lumerman, Abiola Makinwa, Richard Meeran, Sergio Puig, Steven Ratner, Giorgia Sangiuolo, Martijn Scheltema, Anne Van Aaken, Katerina Yiannibas Jan 2019

The Hague Rules On Business And Human Rights Arbitration, Bruno Simma, Diane Desierto, Martin Doe Rodriguez, Jan Eijsbouts, Ursula Kriebaum, Pablo Lumerman, Abiola Makinwa, Richard Meeran, Sergio Puig, Steven Ratner, Giorgia Sangiuolo, Martijn Scheltema, Anne Van Aaken, Katerina Yiannibas

Other Publications

The Hague Rules on Business and Human Rights Arbitration provide a set of procedures for the arbitration of disputes related to the impact of business activities on human rights. The Hague Rules are based on the Arbitration Rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (with new article 1, paragraph 4, as adopted in 2013) (the “UNCITRAL Rules”), with modifications needed to address certain issues likely to arise in the context of business and human rights disputes. Each article is accompanied by a commentary, which includes background on the drafting of various provisions in the Rules, explaining in …


Big Data In Finance: Highlights From The Big Data In Finance Conference Hosted At The University Of Michigan October 27-28, 2016, Michael S. Barr, Brian Koziara, Mark D. Flood, Alfred Hero, H. V. Jagadish Feb 2018

Big Data In Finance: Highlights From The Big Data In Finance Conference Hosted At The University Of Michigan October 27-28, 2016, Michael S. Barr, Brian Koziara, Mark D. Flood, Alfred Hero, H. V. Jagadish

Law & Economics Working Papers

How can financial data be made more accessible and more secure, as well as more useful to regulators, market participants, and the public? As new data sets are created, opportunities emerge. Vast quantities of financial data may help identify emerging risks, enable market participants and regulators to see and better understand financial networks and interconnections, enhance financial stability, bolster consumer protection, and increase access to the underserved. Data can also increase transparency in the financial system for market participants, regulators and the public. These data sets, however, can raise significant questions about security and privacy; ensuring data quality; protecting against …


Do International Organisations Play Favourites? An Impartialist Account, Steven Ratner Jan 2009

Do International Organisations Play Favourites? An Impartialist Account, Steven Ratner

Book Chapters

The recent turn of politics and philosophy to serious appraisals of international law is welcome news for politics, ethics and law. Politics can offer us rich description of the international landscape – the actors and their policies, conflicts and approaches to overcoming them; and political and moral philosophy can produce reasoned prescription for devising a just world order. But international law is a critical bridge between them, for law, with its grounding in the institutional arrangements devised by global actors, provides a path to implementing theories of the right or of the good. Just as scholars of politics have realised …


Business, Steven R. Ratner Jan 2007

Business, Steven R. Ratner

Book Chapters

This chapter seeks to expose some of the divergences between doctrine and reality, and to suggest ways of understanding the field that take proper account of business. It does so first by examining the roles and goals of business entities with respect to international environmental law. It then examines how international law has accommodated the place of business in environmental policy with respect to two key issues: (1) corporations as the target of legal obligations; and (2) corporations as participants in the process of international environmental law, particularly with respect to law-making and implementation. I conclude with some thoughts regarding …