Law Commons^™

The Unjustified Absence Of Federal Fraud Protection In The Labor Market, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

Federal law offers significant protection against fraud in the capital market, based on the compelling rationale that accurate information is important in allowing the securities markets to allocate financial capital to real capital. Notwithstanding some recent statutory adjustments, federal securities law remains committed to a central idea: it is wrong for a company or a corporate official knowingly to make a misrepresentation in order to take value from another in a securities transaction. This article argues that rationales analogous to those justifying fraud protection in the capital market also hold true in the labor market. Fraud may in fact be …

Corporate Law And The Rhetoric Of Choice, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

Rhetorically, the notion of choice has always been a powerful one in politics and law. This essay is intended to offer a note of caution about its use. Despite its progressive hue of individual freedom, the rhetoric of choice increasingly tends to be a notion used to defend and uphold existing matrices of economic and social power. This is because the rhetoric of choice is an excellent way to support exiting power relationships. The assertion that people acting within such power relationships are simply choosing their current situation undermines efforts to change those relationships. The powerful stay powerful; the weak …

Our Conflicting Judgements About Pornography, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

A Bridle, A Prod And A Big Stick: An Evaluation Of Class Actions, Shareholder Proposals And The Ultra Vires Doctrine As Methods For Controlling Corporate Behavior, Adam Sulkowski, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

Written for the recent conference at St. John’s University Law School on “People of Color, Women, and the Public Corporation,” this paper evaluates recently applied methods of influencing corporate behavior on employment practices and recommends that a dormant legal doctrine be revitalized and added to the “tool box” of activists and concerned shareholders. The methods of influencing corporate behavior that are evaluated include class action lawsuits and shareholder proposals to amend corporate policy. In both contexts, there are procedural hurdles to achieving success. Even when success is achieved, there are limits to the actual changes in organizational behavior that result. …

An Experimental Test Of Fairness Under Agency And Profit Constraints (With Notes On Implications For Corporate Governance), Kent Greenfield, Peter Kostant

Kent Greenfield

Building on the scholarship using ultimatum game experiments to explore the presence of fairness norms in bargaining exchanges, the authors test whether such norms are affected by agency relationships alone or agency relationships linked with a duty to maximize returns to the principal. The findings are dramatic. The study, the first of its kind, indicates a significant decrease in a concern for fairness (defined as a willingness to share a pot of money) when a participant in a bargaining transaction acts as an agent for another and owes a duty to maximize the return to the principal. We find no …

Gradgrind’S Education: Using Dickens And Aristotle To Understand (And Replace?) The Business Judgment Rule, Kent Greenfield, John E. Nilsson

Kent Greenfield

This article uses literature and philosophy to help explain and critique existing corporate law doctrine. Starting from Charles Dickens's Hard Times, the article provides a new explanation for one of the great puzzles of existing corporate law doctrine, the coexistence of the strict duty of management to maximize profits and the "business judgment rule," the practice of courts to review management decisions with great deference. The article argues that the business judgment rule is a necessary corrective to the irrationality of the underlying duty to maximize profits. The article makes this argument by analogizing corporate law to Dickens's character of …

The Myth Of Choice: Personal Responsibility In A World Of Limits, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

Americans are fixated on the idea of choice. Our political theory is based on the consent of the governed. Our legal system is built upon the argument that people freely make choices and bear responsibility for them. And what slogan could better express the heart of our consumer culture than "Have it your way"?

In this provocative book, Kent Greenfield poses unsettling questions about the choices we make. What if they are more constrained and limited than we like to think? If we have less free will than we realize, what are the implications for us as individuals and for …