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Full-Text Articles in Law
Shareholder Voting And The Symbolic Politics Of Corporation As Contract, Matthew T. Bodie, Grant M. Hayden
Shareholder Voting And The Symbolic Politics Of Corporation As Contract, Matthew T. Bodie, Grant M. Hayden
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American corporations are structured in such a way that shareholders, and shareholders alone, have the right to vote in all significant corporate decisions. Over the years, this exclusive shareholder franchise has been supported by an ongoing procession of justifications. But as those arguments have fallen by the wayside, shareholder primacists have circled back and latched upon a final argument for the special voting status of shareholders, arguing that this fundamental feature of corporate governance is the product of the set of freely-bargained-for agreements among all corporate constituents. Because this set of agreements reflects the preferences of all parties to the …
The Next Iteration Of Progressive Corporate Law, Matthew T. Bodie
The Next Iteration Of Progressive Corporate Law, Matthew T. Bodie
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A wave of progressive corporate law scholarship in the late 1980s and early 1990s reimagined corporate law from the perspective of employees, consumers, and other stakeholders left behind by shareholder primacy. Almost thirty years later, it is time to revisit this literature and consider what progressive corporate law should be in the 21st Century. This essay argues for three changes: (1) a move to the theory of the firm as the underlying economic literature; (2) a focus on employees, rather than stakeholders more generally, and (3) an effort to change statutory and structural aspects of corporate law, such as board …
Participation As A Theory Of Employment, Matthew T. Bodie
Participation As A Theory Of Employment, Matthew T. Bodie
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The concept of employment is an important legal category, not only for labor and employment law, but also for intellectual property law, torts, criminal law, and tax. The right-to-control test has dominated the debate over the definition of “employee” since its origins in the master-servant doctrine. However, the test no longer represents our modern notion of what it means to be an employee. This change has played itself out in research on the theory of the firm, which has shifted from a model of control to a model of participation in a team production process. This Article uses the theory …
The Post-Revolutionary Period In Corporate Law: Returning To The Theory Of The Firm, Matthew T. Bodie
The Post-Revolutionary Period In Corporate Law: Returning To The Theory Of The Firm, Matthew T. Bodie
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Law and economics revolutionized the study of corporate law. However, while modern finance theory and attendant empirical research continue to explore the effects of law on shareholder value, the theory of the firm literature has been underutilized. This paper, presented as part of the Berle III: Theory of the Firm Symposium at Seattle University School of Law, argues that corporate law scholars should turn their attention back to this literature and develop a deeper understanding of the corporation as firm.