Law Commons^™

Should Shareholders Be Rewarded For Loyalty? European Experiments On The Wedge Between Tenured Voting And Takeover Law, Chiara Mosca

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Corporate law reveals its democratic background when it comes to the general meetings of shareholders, finding, on both sides of the Atlantic, its most tangible expression in the “one share, one vote” principle. While, in the political landscape, the “one person, one vote” standard is absolute dogma and weighting votes according to people’s preferences and interests has never proved feasible, in the corporate scenario the one share, one vote principle is constantly challenged by the incentives of companies and their shareholders to shape corporate rights according to specific needs. In this respect, some legislators (specifically in France and Italy) have …

Comparative Fiscal Federalism: What Can The U.S. Supreme Court And The European Court Of Justice Learn From Each Other's Tax Jurisprudence?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In October 2005, a group of distinguished tax experts from the European Union and the United States, who had never met before, convened at the University of Michigan Law School for a conference on "Comparative Fiscal Federalism: Comparing the U.S. Supreme Court and European Court of Justice Tax Jurisprudence." The purpose of the conference was to shed comparative light on the very different approaches taken by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the U.S. Supreme Court to the question of fiscal federalism. The conference was sponsored by the U-M Law School, U-M's European Union Center, and Harvard Law School's …

Transgovernmental Networks Vs. Democracy: The Case Of The European Information Privacy Network, Francesca Bignami

Michigan Journal of International Law

The perspective offered by this Article is twofold. The emergence of transgovernmental networks gives rise to two questions, one causal and the other normative. First, how do we explain transnational cooperation through networks? Why do governments and regulators choose to establish networks rather than retain virtually limitless discretion over policymaking, conditioned only by international legal obligations? Based on the author’s examination of the records of the intergovernmental negotiations on the Data Protection Directive, this Article concludes that one precondition for fettering national discretion through networks is common preferences among governments on the substance of the policy to be administered. Compared …

Protection Against Unwarranted Searches And Seizures Of Corporate Premises Under Article 8 Of The European Convention On Human Rights: The Colas Est Sa V. France Approach, Marius Emberland

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this Article, the author considers the judgment delivered April 16, 2002, by the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Colas Est SA v. France. The judgment concerned the interpretation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which provides: (1) Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. (2) There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests …

State Aids And European Community Law, Hans-Jorg Niemeyer

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article provides an overview of EC State aid rules, focusing on recent Commission policy and recent judgments of the Court of Justice on State aids. In Part I, some general points, such as what may constitute a State aid, are considered. In Part II, the procedural aspects are dealt with in more detail, with emphasis on the notification process, and the procedure for reviewing State aids. Part III examines the recovery of illegally granted aids, and the defenses a beneficiary may assert. Next, Part IV sets out the remedies available for breach of the State aid rules, including the …

The European Alternative To Uniformity In Corporation Laws, Alfred F. Conard

Michigan Law Review

Although the European Communities chose many patterns of business law that were parallel to the American, they deliberately rejected the American freedom of each state to frame its corporation law to suit itself. They decided to impose not complete uniformity, but a degree of "coordination" of "equivalent safeguards" that they deemed appropriate to the existence of an economic union. Leading commentators have described the process as "harmonization."

The decision to coordinate stimulates reflection on the relative merits of the American system of giving states a free choice of corporation regimes, restricted only marginally by federal securities regulation, and the European …

Towards A European Constitution Of The Firm: Problems And Perspectives, Thomas E. Abeltshauser

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article will discuss in particular the proposed EEC directive on the harmonization of corporate structures as well as the proposed regulation of the Societas Europea. Initially, these proposals were strongly oriented toward German law. As such, a corporation had to have a managing board as well as a so-called supervisory board and a general meeting of stockholders. Since the EEC Commission published the so-called "Green Paper," which contains a comparative analysis of national legal systems requirements for the structure of corporations and provisions for co-determination rights for employees at the board level, the new proposals concerning the constitution of …

Companies In The European Community: Are The Conflict-Of-Law Rules Ready For 1992?, Andreas Reindl

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article describes the current situation in the emerging integrated system of the European Community, focusing on the potential conflict between Community rules on the freedom of establishment and national conflict-of-law rules relating to companies. In the first part, I shall outline the relevant provisions of EC law and the two conflict-of-law concepts presently exhibited in the national laws of the Member States. In the second part, I shall discuss three cases in which the European Court of Justice recently addressed this subject. In the third part, I shall analyze the impact of the Court's opinions, and finally outline options …

Federalism And Company Law, Richard M. Buxbaum

Michigan Law Review

It would be a simplifying and historically dubious reduction to equate state interest in corporation law with interventionist or regulatory policies and federal interest with liberal or facilitative ones. So long as a federal legal system presupposes the continuing involvement of two governments with the same subject, however, it is only the subordinate polity's interest in intervention or regulation that makes for interesting reading. State facilitative policies in an era of national facilitative policies raise no questions, and a state's continuing adherence to laissez faire policies when the national government turns interventionist typically creates no conflict. It is only the …

New Ways In Corporate Governance: European Experiments With Labor Representation On Corporate Boards, Klaus J. Hopt

Michigan Law Review

Corporate governance has been discussed in Europe for over 150 years. Indeed, in the 1840's, when the first Corporation Act was enacted in Prussia, three troubling features of the corporate organization form had already been discerned: (I) the vulnerability of small investors who lacked the influence and sophistication to. control the corporation; (2) the risk to creditors and the public created by the limited liability of the corporation, especially when combined with inadequate funds and poorly controlled management; and (3) the power that big corporations could amass economically, by monopolizing markets, and politically, by exerting influence on public opinion and …

Competition, Integration And Economic Efficiency In The Eec From The Point Of View Of The Private Firm, Michel Waelbroeck

Michigan Law Review

As early as 1956, experts appointed by the six original Member State governments to investigate measures to pursue integration after the failure of the European Defence Community clearly established this link between the abolition of barriers to trade and an increase in the intensity of competition. In what has come to be known as the "Spaak Report," the experts noted the technology gap then separating Europe from the United States and proposed, as a remedial measure, the creation of a ''vast zone of common economic policy, constituting a powerful production unit, and allowing a continued expansion, and increased stability, an …

The Supervision Of Corporate Management: A Comparison Of Developments In European Community And United States Law, Alfred F. Conard

Michigan Law Review

In 1971, Eric Stein published an account of the remarkable progress of the European Economic Community (EEC) toward a harmonized law of business corporations. The progress was particularly striking from an American viewpoint, because the harmonization was achieved by moving toward the more rigorous of the various national standards, in contrast to the "race of laxity" or "race for the bottom" that has characterized the movement toward uniformity in the corporation laws of U.S. states.

Employee Involvement In Decision-Making: European Attempts At Harmonization, Ruth A. Harvey

Michigan Journal of International Law

Part I of this note examines the sources of Community power over employment policy. Part II analyzes two Community directives approximating laws regarding employee involvement in dismissal procedures. It also examines the impact of these Community directives on two Member States, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG or West Germany) and the United Kingdom. The note focuses on the FRG because its statutes have served as the model for Community directives, and because the harmonization of laws throughout the Community will provide unique benefits to the FRG. The note examines the United Kingdom because its government has historically had a …

European Merger Control: Legal And Economic Analyses On Multinational Enterprises, Volume 1, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of European Merger Control: Legal and Economic Analyses on Multinational Enterprises, Volume 1 edited by Klaus Hopt

Regulating Multinational Corporate Concentration-The European Economic Community, John Temple Lang

Michigan Journal of International Law

It is the purpose of this article to discuss the policies and goals of the efforts of the European Communities to regulate multinational corporate concentration. For reasons that will become clear in the course of the article, it is necessary to start by outlining the means available to the European Communities, both presently and potentially, to promote these policies. It is not possible to see what those policies might be or how they are likely to develop without understanding the practical implications of the various legal rules on which the Community might rely in the future. This article does not …

Stein: Harmonizing Of European Company, Richard M. Buxbaum

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Harmonization of European Company Laws by Eric Stein

Conflict-Of-Laws Rules By Treaty: Recognition Of Companies In A Regional Market, Eric Stein

Michigan Law Review

The term "recognition" has many meanings. We speak in family law of a "recognized child," in public international law of recognizing a newly emerged state or newly installed government, and in private international law (conflict of laws) of recognizing foreign judgments or legal persons. In both public and private international law, it is the nation-state that grants or denies recognition. In public international law, the "recognizing" nation-state expresses "a value judgment acknowledging that a given fact situation is in accord with the exigencies of the international legal order." In private international law (or conflict of laws), on the other hand, …