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Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Law
Maine Corporation Law & Practice, Gregory S. Fryer
Maine Corporation Law & Practice, Gregory S. Fryer
Maine Law Review
The scarcity of case law in Maine on corporate law issues of the day is a fact of life for corporate law practitioners in this State. While courts in more populous states fill library shelves with an ever-growing mix of corporate law decisions, we in Maine often can only wonder which way our own courts would turn if presented with those same issues. Faced with a limited amount of local case law, corporate lawyers here might rarely venture beyond well-hewn traditions were it not for two-and now three-fortunate developments. First and foremost is the Maine Business Corporation Act. The Act …
Maine Corporation Law & Practice, Gregory S. Fryer
Maine Corporation Law & Practice, Gregory S. Fryer
Maine Law Review
The scarcity of case law in Maine on corporate law issues of the day is a fact of life for corporate law practitioners in this State. While courts in more populous states fill library shelves with an ever-growing mix of corporate law decisions, we in Maine often can only wonder which way our own courts would turn if presented with those same issues. Faced with a limited amount of local case law, corporate lawyers here might rarely venture beyond well-hewn traditions were it not for two-and now three-fortunate developments. First and foremost is the Maine Business Corporation Act. The Act …
Gatekeepers, Cultural Captives, Or Knaves? Corporate Lawyers Through Different Lenses, Donald C. Langevoort
Gatekeepers, Cultural Captives, Or Knaves? Corporate Lawyers Through Different Lenses, Donald C. Langevoort
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Studying the behavior of high-status corporate lawyers is challenging. Much writing (including some of my own) addresses the risk of lawyer enabling of client misconduct by drawing from work in behavioral ethics suggesting that at least some apparent complicity is without full awareness of the impropriety. Is this naïve? The first part of this essay pushes harder on consciousness by looking more closely at the lengthy continuum—not a binary yes/no—in the awareness of wrongdoing risk as heavily influenced by the “slippery slope.” Looking at corporate lawyers’ professional responsibility through this lens has some interesting, and as far as I can …
Reality Check On Officer Liability, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Reality Check On Officer Liability, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Lyman P. Q. Johnson
This article addresses the fiduciary duties of corporate officers. Responding to a critique that recent scholarly analyses of officers depart from reality, it argues that, on a variety of grounds, those analyses are more realistic than the critique and provide doctrinal coherence and advance the goal of meaningful executive accountability. The divergent governance functions of directing versus managing are described and it is argued that those disparate roles should matter for fiduciary duty analysis. No great outbreak of litigation should be expected if officers are held to a stricter duty of care than directors because boards of directors, not courts, …
Are Corporate Officers Advised About Fiduciary Duties, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Are Corporate Officers Advised About Fiduciary Duties, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Lyman P. Q. Johnson
This Article reports the results of an empirical study of whether and how in-house corporate counsel advise corporate officers about fiduciary duties. The fiduciary duties of officers long have been neglected by courts, scholars, and lawyers, as the Introduction explains, even though executives play a central role in corporate success and failure. The study’s findings, organized by type of company (public or private), size, and attorney position within the firm, show several interesting patterns in advice-giving practices. For example, fewer than half of all respondents provided advice to officers below the senior-most rank. The results raise the possibility that, unlike …
Counter-Narrative In Corporate Law: Saints And Sinners, Apostles And Epistles, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Counter-Narrative In Corporate Law: Saints And Sinners, Apostles And Epistles, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Lyman P. Q. Johnson
Corporate law is bi-vocal. On the one hand, liberating and amoral statutes permit a master narrative of business persons eagerly pursuing the good life as they see it. The mixture of such lax law and human frailty frequently leads to the unleashing of boundless ambition, vanity, avarice, duplicity, and much mischief. On the other hand, another voice in corporate law occasionally moves into the foreground to interrupt and tell its own story – a counter-narrative demanding a measure of self-restraint – when those who direct or manage company affairs press self-gain (or sloth) to the point of intolerable excess. The …
Going Native: Incentive, Identity, And The Inherent Ethical Problem Of In-House Counsel, Pam Jenoff
Going Native: Incentive, Identity, And The Inherent Ethical Problem Of In-House Counsel, Pam Jenoff
West Virginia Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Stages Of Scandal And The Roles Of General Counsel, Deborah A. Demott
The Stages Of Scandal And The Roles Of General Counsel, Deborah A. Demott
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay examines the roles of a general counsel, as the corporation’s chief legal officer, in responding to scandals when they happen and in developing and enforcing internal preventive practices prior to the occurrence of any particular scandal. The Essay differentiates between scandals and crises more generally, emphasizing the integral connection between scandal and jeopardy to reputation and tracing the interrelationships between a corporation’s reputation and that of its general counsel. The Essay argues that risks associated with scandal may strengthen general counsel’s power within the senior management team, in particular in general counsel’s relationship with the corporation’s CEO. Although …
Reality Check On Officer Liability, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Reality Check On Officer Liability, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Scholarly Articles
This article addresses the fiduciary duties of corporate officers. Responding to a critique that recent scholarly analyses of officers depart from reality, it argues that, on a variety of grounds, those analyses are more realistic than the critique and provide doctrinal coherence and advance the goal of meaningful executive accountability. The divergent governance functions of directing versus managing are described and it is argued that those disparate roles should matter for fiduciary duty analysis. No great outbreak of litigation should be expected if officers are held to a stricter duty of care than directors because boards of directors, not courts, …
Keynote Address: The Role Of Lawyers In The Global Financial Crisis, Steven L. Schwarcz
Keynote Address: The Role Of Lawyers In The Global Financial Crisis, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
In recent articles, the author has argued that the global financial crisis can be attributed in large part to three causes — conflicts, complacency and complexity — as well as to a type of tragedy of the commons. This article, which comprised the keynote address for the 2010 Corporate Law Teachers Association Conference, will focus on the failure of market observers, including corporate lawyers, to foresee or act on critical correlations that might have prevented, or at least mitigated, the crisis. Although conflicts, complacency, complexity and the tragedy of the commons can help to explain this failure, the goal will …
Counter-Narrative In Corporate Law: Saints And Sinners, Apostles And Epistles, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Counter-Narrative In Corporate Law: Saints And Sinners, Apostles And Epistles, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Scholarly Articles
Corporate law is bi-vocal. On the one hand, liberating and amoral statutes permit a master narrative of business persons eagerly pursuing the good life as they see it. The mixture of such lax law and human frailty frequently leads to the unleashing of boundless ambition, vanity, avarice, duplicity, and much mischief. On the other hand, another voice in corporate law occasionally moves into the foreground to interrupt and tell its own story – a counter-narrative demanding a measure of self-restraint – when those who direct or manage company affairs press self-gain (or sloth) to the point of intolerable excess. The …
Are Corporate Officers Advised About Fiduciary Duties, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Are Corporate Officers Advised About Fiduciary Duties, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Scholarly Articles
This Article reports the results of an empirical study of whether and how in-house corporate counsel advise corporate officers about fiduciary duties. The fiduciary duties of officers long have been neglected by courts, scholars, and lawyers, as the Introduction explains, even though executives play a central role in corporate success and failure. The study’s findings, organized by type of company (public or private), size, and attorney position within the firm, show several interesting patterns in advice-giving practices. For example, fewer than half of all respondents provided advice to officers below the senior-most rank. The results raise the possibility that, unlike …
From Lapdog To Watchdog: Sarbanes-Oxley Section 307 And A New Role For Corporate Lawyers, Peter C. Kostant
From Lapdog To Watchdog: Sarbanes-Oxley Section 307 And A New Role For Corporate Lawyers, Peter C. Kostant
NYLS Law Review
No abstract provided.
Conscripting Attorneys To Battle Corporate Fraud Without Shields Or Armor? Reconsidering Retaliatory Discharge In Light Of Sarbanes-Oxley, Kim T. Vu
Michigan Law Review
This Note advocates that federal courts should allow attorneys to bring retaliatory discharge claims under SOX. Traditional rationales prohibiting the claims of retaliatory discharge by attorneys do not apply in the context of Sarbanes-Oxley. This Note contends that the Department of Labor and the federal courts should interpret the whistleblower provisions of § 806 as protecting attorneys who report under § 307. Assuring reporting attorneys that they have protection from retaliation will encourage them to whistleblow and thereby advance SOX's policy goal of ferreting out corporate fraud. Part I explores the legal landscape of retaliatory discharge suits by attorneys. This …
Who Is The Corporation's Lawyer, Ethan S. Burger
Who Is The Corporation's Lawyer, Ethan S. Burger
West Virginia Law Review
No abstract provided.
The New Mandate Of The Corporate Lawyer After The Fall Of Enron And The Enactment Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Christina R. Salem
The New Mandate Of The Corporate Lawyer After The Fall Of Enron And The Enactment Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Christina R. Salem
Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law
No abstract provided.
Competition, Corporate Responsibility, And The China Question, Jospeh Vining
Competition, Corporate Responsibility, And The China Question, Jospeh Vining
Other Publications
"Corporate responsibility" is not a peripheral matter. It is at the core of all decision-making on behalf of business corporations under American law. This paper examines the effort to add an exemption for "business" in corporate form to the exemptions from ordinary responsibility that are seen in other areas of activity - e.g., for the military, for lawyers in adversarial litigation, or for investigators in scientific research. It looks at a number of well known cases and points to the often neglected relevance of both the criminal law applicable to corporations as such, and the evolving professional responsibility of corporate …
Is There A Role For Lawyers In Preventing Future Enrons, Jill E. Fisch, Kenneth M. Rosen
Is There A Role For Lawyers In Preventing Future Enrons, Jill E. Fisch, Kenneth M. Rosen
Villanova Law Review
No abstract provided.