Law Commons^™

Constitutional Crisis In The Commonwealth: Resolving The Conflict Between Governors And Attorneys General, Michael Signer

University of Richmond Law Review

In this article, I argue the solution to agency conflict and the broader problem of establishing the proper scope of executive authority lies in establishing that Virginia has a "statutory" rather than a "common-law" model of the Attorney General's powers, and that the Office of the Attorney General is therefore circumscribed by statute. Contrary to popular understanding, I will argue that Wilder v. Attorney General of Virginia effectively establishes Virginia as a statutory state and resolves the conflict in favor of the Governor. Because the Supreme Court of Virginia is unlikely to act more strongly in favor of the statutory …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Venture Capital, Agency Costs, And The False Dichotomy Of The Corporation, Robert P. Bartlett

Scholarly Works

An implicit dichotomy of the corporation exists in legal scholarship. On one side of the dichotomy rests the publicly held corporation suffering from a significant conflict of interest between its managers and dispersed shareholders; on the other side, the closely held corporation plagued by intershareholder conflict. This Article argues that understanding the agency problems that can exist within a firm demands a rejection of this traditional dichotomy and the theories of the firm built upon it. Using venture capital (VC) finance, this Article demonstrates how this dichotomy obscures how all firms -- public and private -- often face the same …

Essay -- Preemption, Agency Cost Theory, And Predatory Lending By Banking Agents: Are Federal Regulators Biting Off More Than They Can Chew?, Christopher L. Peterson

ExpressO

A pitched battle is currently being waged for control of the American banking industry. For over a hundred years, the federal and state governments have maintained a complex, but relatively stable truce in their contest for power. At the beginning of our republic, state governments were the primary charterers and regulators of banks. In the wake of the Civil War, the National Bank Act created parity between federal and state banks, cementing the notion of a “dual banking system” that endured through the twentieth century. But in the past five years, the federal government has increasingly used its powers under …

Shareholder (And Director) Fiduciary Duties And Shareholder Activism, Paula J. Dalley

ExpressO

Recent attention to shareholder activism in the business and academic press has ignored the legal ramifications of that phenomenon. Under current law, shareholders are neither principals nor agents of the corporation, the board of directors, or the other shareholders; those seeking to increase shareholder power must confront this legal reality. Specifically, proposals for increased shareholder power on the one hand and recent investor attempts to gain actual management control on the other must both be considered in light of the shareholders’ lack of fiduciary responsibility. Moreover, all directors, including those representing “activist” shareholders, are obligated to exercise independent judgment about …

Governance Of Brazilian Pension Funds, Luciana Pires Dias

ExpressO

This paper analyzes theoretically and empirically the governance of pension funds in Brazil. It first demonstrates that the law allows sponsors (employers) to write contracts (by-laws) governing the relationships between the sponsors, the managers and the participants (employees) of the pension funds. It also explains that, from an agency theory perspective, this legal framework favors non-optimal governance structures, since sponsors do not bear the financial consequences of the contracts they create. As predicted, the empirical evidence reported in this thesis shows that sponsors use this authority to create contracts that minimize monitoring and maximize control over business decisions to the …

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

Managing Risk On A $25 Million Bet: Venture Capital, Agency Costs, And The False Dichotomy Of The Corporation, Robert P. Bartlett Iii

ExpressO

An implicit dichotomy of the corporation exists in legal scholarship. On one side of the dichotomy rests the publicly-held corporation suffering from a significant conflict of interest between its managers and dispersed shareholders; on the other side, the closely-held corporation plagued by inter-shareholder conflict.

This Article argues that understanding the agency problems that can exist within a firm demands a rejection of this traditional dichotomy and the theories of the firm built upon it. Using venture capital finance, this Article demonstrates for the first time how this dichotomy obscures how all firms - public and private - often face the …

Using Capture Theory And Chronology In Eminent Domain Proceedings, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

Capture theory--in which private purpose is substituted for government purpose--sheds light on a technique which is coming into greater use post-Kelo v. New London. That case affirmed that eminent domain use need only be rationally related to a legitimate government purpose. Capture theory focuses litigators' attention on "government purpose." That is a question of fact for the trier of fact. This article shows how to use civil discovery in order to show the Court that private purpose has been substituted for government purpose. If it has, the eminent domain use fails, because the use does not meet minimum scrutiny. This …

Why Does The Chesapeake Bay Need Litigators?, Jon A. Mueller, Joseph Tannery

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Reform Of The Fcc: A Reply To Randolph May, Russ Taylor

Federal Communications Law Journal

This brief Article responds to Randolph May's article, Recent Developments in Administrative Law-The FCC's Tumultuous Year in 2003: An Essay on an Opportunity for Institutional Agency Reform, 56 Admin. L. Rev. 1307 (2004). Taylor disputes May's anecdotal evidence that the FCC's poor handling of the Triennial Review and the media ownership proceedings are symptomatic of a broad agency inefficiency that should be remedied by drastically cutting the size of the FCC and placing it under the exclusive control of the executive branch to ensure electoral accountability. Taylor argues that while these suggestions may have value, such a rush to action …

What Default Rules Teach Us About Corporations; What Understanding Corporations Teaches Us About Default Rules, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses corporate law's default rules, which allow corporations to waive their directors' liability for damages based on a breach of their fiduciary duty of care. Most large publicly held corporations have adopted such a waiver in their articles of association. This Article suggests that courts should limit the range of the waivers to the circumstances that existed when the voters voted and to the information they received before they voted. This Article distinguishes between public contracts (legislation) and private contracts (commercial transactions) and the default rules that apply to each. The Article shows that courts view corporations and …

The Dutch Auction Myth, Peter B. Oh

ExpressO

The initial public offering process is under assault. Critics of this process have woven a complex set of interconnected objections to the orthodox method for conducting IPOs, pricing of shares, and allocating them to preferred investors. These critics instead point to online auctions as an alternative IPO method that can provide more equitable access, efficient prices, and egalitarian allocations. These claims rest on Google’s recent IPO and W.R. Hambrecht + Co.’s OpenIPO mechanism, conventionally regarded as impure variants of what is known as a descending-bid or Dutch auction (Dutch IPO).

This article assesses the empirical and theoretical case for Dutch …

Good Faith, State Of Mind, And The Outer Boundaries Of Director Liability In Corporate Law, Christopher M. Bruner

ExpressO

The Delaware General Corporation Law was amended in 1986 to permit shareholder-approved exculpatory charter provisions shielding directors from monetary liability for certain types of fiduciary duty breaches, explicitly excepting breaches of the duty of loyalty and conduct not in "good faith" – evidently distinct concepts in the Delaware legislature’s view. This paper examines the development of corporate fiduciary duty doctrine in Delaware leading up to and following this statutory amendment, focusing particularly on the Delaware courts' evolving conception of the meaning and doctrinal status of good faith. Specifically, the paper argues that Delaware's statutory exculpation regime and good faith case …

Apparent Authority And Healthcare In Illinois - Revisited, 27 N. Ill. U. L. Rev. 11 (2006), Marc Ginsberg, Patricia C. Nowak

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Direct Versus Derivative And The Law Of Limited Liability Companies, Daniel S. Kleinberger

Faculty Scholarship

The hybrid nature of limited liability companies causes us to re-invent, or at least re-examine, many doctrinal wheels. This Article will reexamine one of the most practical of those wheels-the distinction between direct and derivative claims in the context of a closely-held limited liability company.

Case law concerning the direct/derivative distinction is still overwhelmingly from the law of corporations, although LLC cases are now being reported with some frequency. LLC cases routinely analogize to, or borrow from, the corporate law. This Article encompasses that law, analyzes LLC developments, and argues that courts should (i) avoid the "special injury" rule, (ii) …

Imposing Geographical “Locateability” For Voice Over Internet Protocol, Andrea W.M. Louie

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Blaming Function Of Entity Criminal Liability, Samuel W. Buell

Faculty Scholarship

Application of the doctrine of entity criminal liability, which had only a thin tort-like rationale at inception, now sometimes instantiates a social practice of blaming institutions. Examining that social practice can ameliorate persistent controversy over entity liability's place in the criminal law. An organization's role in its agent's bad act is often evaluated with a moral slant characteristic of judgments of criminality and with inquiry into whether the institution qua institution contributed to the agent's wrong. Legal process, by lending clarity and authority, enhances the communicative impact, in the form of reputational effects, of blaming an institution for a wrong. …

Law, Markets And Democracy: A Role For Law In The Neo-Liberal State, Alfred C. Aman, Jr.

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fiduciary Duties And Unincorporated Business Entities: In Defense Of The "Manifestly Unreasonable" Standard, Mark J. Loewenstein

Publications

This article wades into the debate between contractarians and anti-contractarians over the extent to which statutes on unincorporated business entities should limit the ability of the participants in those entities to contract around fiduciary duties. Statutes enacted in the past several years provide considerable, but not complete, freedom to limit fiduciary duties. Contractarians argue that statutory limitations are inefficient and unnecessary, while anti-contractarians take the view that the statutes provide too much freedom of contract. This article stakes out a middle ground, arguing that the drafters of the statutes got it right and that in the absence of statutory limitations …

The Allocation Problem In Multiple-Claimant Representations, Paul H. Edelman, Richard A. Nagareda, Charles Silver

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Multiple-claimant representations-classa ctions and other group lawsuits-pose two principal-agent problems: Shirking (failure to maximize the aggregate recovery) and misallocation (distribution of the aggregate recovery other than according to the relative value of claims). Clients have dealt with these problems separately, using contingent percentage fees to motivate lawyers to maximize the aggregate recovery and monitoring devices (disclosure requirements, client control rights, and third-party review) to encourage appropriate allocations. The scholarly literature has proceeded on the premise that monitoring devices are needed to police misallocations, because the fee calculus cannot do the entire job. This paper shows that this premise is mistaken …

Inside The Administrative State: A Critical Look At The Practice Of Presidential Control, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

From the inception of the administrative state, scholars have proposed various models of agency decision-making to render such decision-making accountable and effective, only to see those models falter when confronted by actual practice. Until now, the presidential control model has been largely impervious to this pattern. That model, which brings agency decision-making under the direction of the President, has strengthened over time, winning broad scholarly endorsement and bipartisan political support. But it, like prior models, relies on abstractions - for example, that the President represents public preferences and resists parochial pressures - that do not hold up as a factual …