Law Commons^™

Widening The Lens On Content Moderation, Jenna Ruddock, Justin Sherman

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

The Taxation Of Cryptocurrency Gains, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Taking Singapore as an example, this article lays out a series of tests for determining whether gains arising from the disposal of cryptocurrencies are trade or business income, “all other income” or capital gains. It also considers the possibility of a presumption that individuals engaging in such transactions are gambling.

Donor-Advised Funds Can Make A Meaningful Impact In Asia, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Such funds give donors more say in the philanthropic process, and can lead to donors being tipped off about underfunded causes. These funds also make it possible for non-millionaires to do their bit.

The False Hope Of Stewardship In The Context Of Controlling Shareholders: Making Sense Out Of The Global Transplant Of A Legal Misfit, Dan W. Puchniak

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) rocked the foundation of the United Kingdom’s financial system. As the dust settled, the UK tried to figure out what went wrong. An autopsy of UK corporate governance revealed that it had developed an acute problem. Institutional investors had come to collectively own a substantial majority of the shares of listed companies, but often lacked the incentive to use their collective ownership rights to monitor them. The failure of these rationally passive institutional investors to act as engaged shareholders—or, as is now the popular vernacular, to be “good stewards”—allowed corporate management to engage in …

Institutional Investors In China: Corporate Governance And Policy Channeling In The Market Within The State, Lin Lin, Dan W. Puchniak

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The extraordinary rise of China’s economy has made understanding Chinese corporate governance an issue of global importance. A rich literature has developed analyzing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) role as China’s largest controlling shareholder and the impact that this has on Chinese corporate governance. However, the CCP’s role as the architect —and direct and indirect controller—of institutional investors in China has been largely overlooked in the legal literature.

The Growth & Regulatory Challenges Of Decentralized Finance, Aaron J. Wright

Articles

Proceedings of the 2021 Spring Conference: The Impact of Blockchain on the Practice of Law Panel 1: The Growth & Regulatory Challenges of Decentralized Finance

The Rise Of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: Opportunities And Challenges, Aaron J. Wright

Articles

The Author explores the nature of DAOs and highlights several areas where states and regulators can adapt existing legal regimes to potentially accommodate DAOs. Part of the Blockchain & Procedural Law seminars (Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law).

The Separation Of Voting And Control: The Role Of Contract In Corporate Governance, Gabriel V. Rauterberg

Articles

The default rules of corporate law make shareholders’ control rights a function of their voting power. Whether a director is elected or a merger is approved depends on how shareholders vote. Yet, in private corporations shareholders routinely alter their rights by contract. This phenomenon of shareholder agreements—contracts among the owners of a firm— has received far less attention than it deserves, mainly because detailed data about the actual contents of shareholder agreements has been lacking. Private companies disclose little, and shareholder agreements are thought to play a trivial or nonexistent role in public companies. I show that this is false—fifteen …

Deal Protection Devices, Albert H. Choi

Articles

In mergers and acquisitions transactions, a buyer and a seller will often agree to contractual mechanisms (deal protection devices) to deter third parties from jumping the deal and to compensate a disappointed buyer. With the help of auction theory, this Article analyzes various deal protection devices, while focusing on the two most commonly used mechanisms: match rights and target termination fees. A match right gives the buyer a right to “match” a third party’s offer so as to prevent the third party from snatching the target away, while a termination fee compensates the buyer when a third party acquires the …

Federal Rules Of Platform Procedure, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

Tech platforms serve as private courthouses for disputes about speech, lodging, commerce, elections, and reputation. After receiving allegations of defamatory content in top search results, Google must decide between protecting one person's public image and another's profits or speech. Amazon adjudicates disputes between consumers and third-party merchants about defective or counterfeit items. For many small businesses, layoffs and bankruptcy hang in the balance. This Article begins to uncover the processes that these platforms use to resolve disputes and proposes reforms. Other important businesses that intermediate, such as credit card companies ruling on a disputed charge between a merchant and consumer, …

Predictors Of Fraudulent Monday Effect Workers Compensation Claims Filing, Sharla St. Rose

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Monday Effect Claims refer to workers compensation claims filed on Mondays for easy to conceal injuries such as strains, sprains, and back injuries. Researchers and industry experts have long believed that there is an element of fraud in these claims, resulting from individuals who were injured during the weekend, while not at work, looking to take advantage of the medical benefits available through workers compensation insurance. Fraudulent Monday Effect Claims (FMEC), as presented in this study, specifically refer to workers compensation claims filed for injuries that occurred while an individual was not at work, presumably during the weekend.

A study …

Changemakers: Finding The Perfect Niche, Michael Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Singapore’S Special Insolvency Scheme For Small Companies, Vincent Ooi, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In this article, the authors examine a temporary program in Singapore to help micro and small businesses facing insolvency amid the COVID-19 crisis.

Potential Competition And Antitrust Analysis: Monopoly Profits Exceed Duopoly Profits, Steven C. Salop

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This short note prepared for an OECD meeting in June 2021 examines several antitrust issues involving analysis of potential competition. While the analysis is not new, it is still useful to collect them together in a unified fashion to show how they are related. In this regard, all the analysis and conclusions flow from the overarching (and obvious) points that exclusionary conduct and agreements that maintain monopoly power very often harm consumers, and that monopoly profits typically exceed the combined duopoly profits earned by the dominant firm and the entrant, if there is successful entry. While this is not inevitably …

Corruption In Capsules: How It Is Legal For Companies To Put Harmful Ingredients In Vitamins And Dietary Supplements, Emily Leggiero

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

The vitamin and supplement industry has increased exponentially in profits as well as potential products on the market since the turn of the century. However, these products are not regulated, nor do they undergo any premarket clinical research or testing. Public health is compromised by vitamins and supplements that are available for American consumption that is disproportionately unregulated to their chemically similar counterparts. This wicked problem is facilitated through the combination of historical legislative definitions that has since been distorted for corrupt administrative gain through the allotment of corporate expenditures. Company disbursements are made to the same policymakers that create …

The “Value” Of A Public Benefit Corporation, Jill E. Fisch, Steven Davidoff Solomon

All Faculty Scholarship

We examine the “value” a PBC form provides for publicly-traded corporations. We analyze the structure of the PBC form and find that other than requiring a designated social purpose it does not differ significantly in siting control and direction with shareholders. We also examine the purpose statements in the charters of the most economically significant PBCs. We find that, independent of structural limitations on accountability, these purpose statements are, in most cases, too vague and aspirational to be legally significant, or even to serve as a reliable checks on PBC behavior. We theorize, and provide evidence, that without a legal …

Follow-Up Enforcement, Andrew K. Jennings

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Social Enterprise Law: A Theoretical And Comparative Perspective, Rado Bohinc, Jeff Schwartz

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This article analyzes social enterprise from a theoretical and comparative perspective. Social enterprises are distinct from nonprofits because they have equity-holders; they are distinct from socially minded for-profits because their mission is sacrosanct. We set out a regulatory template to support entities with this unique hybrid character. Only companies that commit to a mission-centric purpose, and adopt transparency and accountability mechanisms that police faithfulness to this commitment, would be entitled to call themselves “social enterprises.” This narrowly tailored regulatory structure would allow these firms to stand out and attract likeminded consumers and investors.

Neither the US nor the EU offers …

'Public' Mutual Funds, Jeff Schwartz

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The concentration of public equity in the hands of just a few mutual-fund complexes has raised concerns about whether these institutions take seriously the stewardship obligations that come with the significant voting power that they have amassed. One leading theory, the agency-cost theory, is that the major fund complexes, all of which specialize in passively managed funds, lack the incentive to adequately police corporate managers on behalf of fund shareholders. Others counter that competition for mutual-fund investors provides sufficient incentive for satisfactory oversight.

I argue that neither agency costs nor competitive incentives are the primary driver of stewardship behavior. Rather, …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Scholars Of The Law Of Non-Profit Organizations In Support Of Respondent: Americans For Prosperity Foundation V. Matthew Rodriguez, Nos. 19-251 & 19-255, Ellen P. Aprill, Roger Colinvaux, Sean Delany, James Fishman, Brian D. Galle, Philip Hackney, Jill R. Horwitz, Cindy Lott, Ray D. Madoff, Jill S. Manny, Nancy A. Mclaughlin, Richard Schmalbeck

Amici Briefs

The twelve individuals filing this amicus brief are professors and scholars of the law of nonprofit organizations. No party in this case represents all three of charity’s key stakeholders: charities, states, and taxpayers who underwrite the charities’ funding. Amici are participating in this litigation in order to aid the Court in understanding how these three interests depend on one another. They also attempt to provide a clearer understanding of state supervision of charities and how that supervision related to federal tax law.

Pernicious Loyalty, Andrew S. Gold

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Just Say Yes? The Fiduciary Duty Implications Of Directorial Acquiescence, Lisa Fairfax

All Faculty Scholarship

The rise in shareholder activism is one of the most significant recent phenomena in corporate governance. Shareholders have successfully managed to enhance their power within the corporation, and much of that success has resulted from corporate managers and directors voluntarily acceding to shareholder demands. Directors’ voluntary acquiescence to shareholder demands is quite simply remarkable. Remarkable because most of the changes reflect policies and practices that directors have vehemently opposed for decades, and because when opposing such changes directors stridently insisted that the changes were not in the corporation’s best interest. In light of that insistence, and numerous statements from directors …

Lifting Labor’S Voice: A Principled Path Toward Greater Worker Voice And Power Within American Corporate Governance, Leo E. Strine Jr., Aneil Kovvali, Oluwatomi O. Williams

All Faculty Scholarship

In view of the decline in gain sharing by corporations with American workers over the last forty years, advocates for American workers have expressed growing interest in allowing workers to elect representatives to corporate boards. Board level representation rights have gained appeal because they are a highly visible part of codetermination regimes that operate in several successful European economies, including Germany’s, in which workers have fared better.

But board-level representation is just one part of the comprehensive codetermination regulatory strategy as it is practiced abroad. Without a coherent supporting framework that includes representation from the ground up, as is provided …

Implementing An Efficient Insolvency Framework For Micro And Small Firms, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) represent about 90% of businesses and more than 50% of employment worldwide. Despite the economic relevance of MSMEs in most countries around the world, and even more in emerging markets, most insolvency jurisdictions do not address adequately the insolvency of MSMEs. In a recent article, entitled ‘Implementing an Insolvency Framework for Micro and Small Firms’ (International Insolvency Review, forthcoming), I seek to contribute to the existing literature on the insolvency treatment of MSMEs. After analysing the particular problems and features of MSMEs, as well as the insolvency reforms for MSMEs recently implemented in various …

Reconsidering The Evolutionary Erosion Account Of Corporate Fiduciary Law, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article reconsiders the dominant account of corporate law’s duty of loyalty, which asserts that the courts have steadily relaxed standards of fiduciary scrutiny applied to self-dealing by corporate managers across more than a century of history—to the great detriment of the shareholder interest. The account originated in Harold Marsh, Jr.’s foundational article, Are Directors Trustees? Conflicts of Interest and Corporate Morality, published in The Business Lawyer in 1966. Marsh’s showing of historical lassitude has been successfully challenged in a recent book by Professor David Kershaw. This Article takes Professor Kershaw’s critique a step further, asking whether the evolutionary …

Looking Forward: Professor Roberta Karmel's Prescient Views On The Transformation Of Self-Regulatory Organizations And Of The Securities Market Structure At The Turn Of The Last Century, James Fanto

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Limited Liability Partnerships: An (Overlooked) Hole In The Shield, Lin (Lynn) Bai, Sarah Harden

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

There is a split of judicial authority on whether limited liability applies when the creditor is a partner of a limited liability partnership. The New York Court of Appeals narrowly interpreted the partnership statute and denied the applicability, but the California Court of Appeals upheld it. The difference has been overlooked by the legal and business communities. This paper shows that the narrow interpretation is inconsistent with the legislative intent, laden with procedural obstacles in enforcement, and inharmonious with settled legal doctrines and tenets of law-making.

Symposium Introduction: A Tribute To Roberta Karmel, James Fanto

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Yin And Yang Of Corporations And Democracy, Franklin A. Gevurtz

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

These are perilous times for American democracy. Among the threats, many point to the power of corporations. This article examines that threat by considering a series of dualisms characterizing the relationship between corporations and democracy.

This begins with a look at the anti- as well as the pro-democratic impacts of the earliest corporations and the paradoxes with respect to democracy created during the evolution of corporate law. The article then looks at internal corporate governance (so-called “corporate” or “shareholder democracy”) to show how, on the one hand, it contains features addressing some of the greatest current threats to American democracy, …

Caremark And Esg, Perfect Together: A Practical Approach To Implementing An Integrated, Efficient, And Effective Caremark And Eesg Strategy, Leo E. Strine Jr., Kirby M. Smith, Reilly S. Steel

Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership

With increased calls from investors, legislators, and academics for corporations to consider employee, environmental, social, and governance factors (“EESG”) when making decisions, boards and managers are struggling to situate EESG within their existing reporting and organizational structures. Building on an emerging literature connecting EESG with corporate compliance, this Essay argues that EESG is best understood as an extension of the board’s duty to implement and monitor a compliance program under Caremark. If a company decides to do more than the legal minimum, it will simultaneously satisfy legitimate demands for strong EESG programs and promote compliance with the law. Building on …