Law Commons^™

The Public’S Companies, Andrew K. Jennings

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

This Essay uses a series of survey studies to consider how public understandings of public and private companies map into urgent debates over the role of the corporation in American society. Does a social-media company, for example, owe it to its users to follow the free-speech principles embodied in the First Amendment? May corporate managers pursue environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) policies that could reduce short-term or long-term profits? How should companies respond to political pushback against their approaches to free expression or ESG?

The studies’ results are consistent with understandings that both public and private companies have greater public …

Challenging The Telco-Cable Cross-Ownership Ban: First Amendment And Antitrust Implications For The Interactive Information Highway, Laura Land Sigal

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Note explores options available to decisionmakers by analyzing Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. v. United States (C & P), which set an important precedent regarding a telephone company's First Amendment right to provide video programming over its own facilities in its local service area. C & P, a Bell Atlantic Corporation subsidiary providing local telephone service in Northern Virginia, claimed that the cable-telco cross-ownership ban, codified at § 533(b) of the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984, infringes unconstitutionally upon its First Amendment right to freedom of expression. On November 21, 1994, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth …