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Full-Text Articles in Law
Hobby Lobby And The Pathology Of Citizens United, Ellen D. Katz
Hobby Lobby And The Pathology Of Citizens United, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
Four years ago, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission held that for-profit corporations possess a First Amendment right to make independent campaign expenditures. In so doing, the United States Supreme Court invited speculation that such corporations might possess other First Amendment rights as well. The petitioners in Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius are now arguing that for-profit corporations are among the intended beneficiaries of the Free Exercise Clause and, along with the respondents in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, that they also qualify as “persons” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Neither suggestion follows inexorably from Citizens United, …
Citizens United And The Corporate Form, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Citizens United And The Corporate Form, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
In Citizens United vs. FEC, the Supreme Court struck down a Federal statute banning direct corporate expenditures on political campaigns. The decision has been widely criticized and praised as a matter of First Amendment law. But it is also interesting as another step in the evolution of our legal views of the corporation. This article argues that by viewing Citizens United through the prism of theories about the corporate form, it is possible to see that the majority and the dissent departed from previous Supreme Court jurisprudence on the First Amendment rights of corporations. It is also possible to then …
Reflections On Section 5 Of The Ftc Act And The Ftc's Case Against Intel, Daniel A. Crane
Reflections On Section 5 Of The Ftc Act And The Ftc's Case Against Intel, Daniel A. Crane
Articles
The Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC’s”) unprecedented enforcement action against Intel raises profound issues concerning the scope of the FTC’s powers to give a construction to Section 5 of the FTC Act that goes beyond the substantive reach of the Sherman Act. While I have urged the FTC to assert such independence from the Sherman Act, this is the wrong case to make a break. Indeed, if anything, Intel poses a risk of seriously setting back the development of an independent Section 5 power by provoking a hostile appellate court to rebuke the FTC’s effort and cabin the FTC’s powers in …
Citizens United And The Corporate Form, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Citizens United And The Corporate Form, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
In Citizens United vs. FEC, the Supreme Court struck down a Federal statute banning direct corporate expenditures on political campaigns. The decision has been widely criticized and praised as a matter of First Amendment law. But it is also interesting as another step in the evolution of our legal views of the corporation. This Article argues that by viewing Citizens Unitedthrough the prism of theories about the corporate form, it is possible to see that the majority and the dissent departed from previous Supreme Court jurisprudence on the First Amendment rights of corporations. It is also possible to then predict …
Stoneridge Investment Partners V. Scientific-Atlanta: The Political Economy Of Securities Class Action Reform, Adam C. Pritchard
Stoneridge Investment Partners V. Scientific-Atlanta: The Political Economy Of Securities Class Action Reform, Adam C. Pritchard
Articles
I begin in Part II by explaining the wrong turn that the Court took in Basic. The Basic Court misunderstood the function of the reliance element and its relation to the question of damages. As a result, the securities class action regime established in Basic threatens draconian sanctions with limited deterrent benefit. Part III then summarizes the cases leading up to Stoneridge and analyzes the Court's reasoning in that case. In Stoneridge, like the decisions interpreting the reliance requirement of Rule 10b-5 that came before it, the Court emphasized policy implications. Sometimes policy implications are invoked to broaden the reach …
Free Speech And Corporate Freedom: A Comment On First National Bank Of Boston V. Bellotti, Carl E. Schneider
Free Speech And Corporate Freedom: A Comment On First National Bank Of Boston V. Bellotti, Carl E. Schneider
Articles
The corporation was born in chains but is everywhere free. That freedom was recently affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti. In Bellotti, the Court overturned a Massachusetts criminal statute forbidding banks and business corporations to make expenditures intended to influence referenda concerning issues not "materially affecting" the corporation's "property, business, or assets." In doing so, the Court confirmed its discovery that commercial speech is not unprotected by the first amendment and announced a novel doctrine that corporate speech is not unprotected by the first amendment. Although several years have …
Public Utility Valuation, Edwin C. Goddard
Public Utility Valuation, Edwin C. Goddard
Articles
It has been so often remarked that the "valuation" of public utilities is determined by no rule of thumb, that there are no fixed rules or formulas to guide courts or commissions, that determination of value as a rate base is matter of judgment and discretion in each case, Minnesota Rate Cares, 230 U. S. 352, 434, that the statement has come to be believed by reason in part of its much repetition. It is usually accepted as axiomatic. The glorious uncertainty resulting from such an admission will continue so long as judgments of one man or set of men …
Public Utility Valuation - Going-Concern Value In Rate Making, Edwin C. Goddard
Public Utility Valuation - Going-Concern Value In Rate Making, Edwin C. Goddard
Articles
What is the effect of a city ordinance which proposes to a public utility company the terms on which it may dispose of its product to the users, but which is rejected by the company? As to a company not yet doing business it is clear that the ordinance when rejected becomes a mere legal nullity. It never was more than an offer that might ripen into a binding contract by acceptance. That it is by no means a nullity as to a utility actually operating in the city after the expiration of its franchise and as a mere tenant …
Public Utility Valuation, Edwin C. Goddard
Public Utility Valuation, Edwin C. Goddard
Articles
EVERY consideration of valuation of a public utility, whether for the purpose of condemnation for purchase or as a basis for fixing rates or permitting the issue of stock or bonds, must start from Sinyth v. Ames, and the rule therein laid down by HARLAN, J., at page 546: "We hold, however, that the basis of all calculations as to the reasonableness of rates to be charged by a corporation maintaining a highway under legislative sanction must be the fair value of the property being used by it for the convenience of the public. And in order to ascertain that …
Corporations And Express Trusts As Business Organizations, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
Corporations And Express Trusts As Business Organizations, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
Articles
PRESIDENT BUTLER of Columbia University is reported to have said in an address before the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1911, that "the limited liability corporation is the greatest single discovery of modem times, whether you judge it by its social, by its ethical, by its industrial, or, in the long run--after we understand it and know how to use it,--by its political, effects." 1
The Standard Oil Decision: The Rule Of Reason, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
The Standard Oil Decision: The Rule Of Reason, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
Articles
After twenty-one years the Sherman Anti Trust Act has been applied to the typical combination restraining interstate commerce, which that act was designed to prevent.
The Corporation Tax Decision, Ralph W. Aigler
The Corporation Tax Decision, Ralph W. Aigler
Articles
Seldom, if ever, in the history of the country has the Supreme Court been called upon within a comparatively short period of time to decide so many questions of widespread interest and vital importance as has been the case during the last year or two. Attempts on the part of the state and national governments to regulate and control corporations, which in recent years have come to exercise such a large and not always wholesome influence upon affairs generally, have been the occasion for the consideration by the court of many of the important cases recently presented. Among these are …
What Is Interstate Commerce?, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
What Is Interstate Commerce?, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
Articles
In the case of International Text-book Company v. Pigg, Advance Sheets May 1, 1910 (30 Sup. Ct. 481) the Supreme Court of the United States, decided April 4, 1910, that a "corporation engaged in imparting instruction by correspondence, whose business involves the solicitation of students in other states by local agents, who are to collect and forward to the home office the tuition fees, and the systematic intercourse between the corporation and its scholars and agents, wherever situated, and the transportation of the needful books, apparatus, and papers," is engaged in interstate commerce, and a state statute which makes the …
State Regulations Affecting Interstate Commerce, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
State Regulations Affecting Interstate Commerce, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
Articles
The line between regulations of intrastate and interstate commerce is difficult to draw and hard to maintain. This is well illustrated in the recent case of St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company v. Arkansas, decided by the Supreme Court of the United States April 4, 1910, Advance Sheets, May I, 1910, p. 476, 30 Sup.Ct. 476.
The Constitutionality Of The Federal Corporation Tax, Ralph W. Aigler
The Constitutionality Of The Federal Corporation Tax, Ralph W. Aigler
Articles
During the special session of Congress held the past summer there was enacted as an amendment to the new Tariff Law what is generally known as the Federal Corporation Tax.1 At the time of its consideration in Congress and since its enactment there has been considerable discussion regarding the constitutionality of the measure, and no little doubt has been expressed as to its validity.
Interstate Commerce And State Control Of Foreign Corporations, Ralph W. Aigler
Interstate Commerce And State Control Of Foreign Corporations, Ralph W. Aigler
Articles
Corporations are the creatures of their parent state and outside the borders of the state creating them they have no existence except such as is granted them by comity. Bank of Augusta v. Earle, 13 Pet. 519; Lafayette Ins. Co. v. French, 18 How. 404; Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168; Ducat v. Chicago, 10 Wall. 410; Liverpool Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 10 Wall, 566; Home Ins. Co. v. Morse, 20 Wall. 445; Horn Silver Mining Co. v. New York, 143 U. S. 305; Waters-Pierce Oil Co. v. Texas, 177 U. S. 28; Security Mut. L. I. Co. v. Prewitt, …
Valuing Property And Franchises Of Public Service Corporations For Fixing Rates, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
Valuing Property And Franchises Of Public Service Corporations For Fixing Rates, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
Articles
The Supreme Court of the United States has recently decided two important cases relating to the proper valuation of the property of public service corporations for the purpose of fixing rates to be charged for their services. These are Knoxille v. Knoxville Water Company, 211 U. S.--. 29 S. C. 148, and Willcox Y. Consolidated Gas Co.. -- U. S. --. 29 S. C. 192,a both decided January 4, 1909.
The Investigation Of Corporate Monopolies, Edson R. Sunderland
The Investigation Of Corporate Monopolies, Edson R. Sunderland
Articles
The Supreme Court of the United States has recently given a clear and brief statement of its views respecting the right of a corporation officer to refuse to testify on the ground that his testimony may subject the corporation to a criminal prosecution. Hale v. Henkel, 26 Sup. Ct. Rep. 370. Hale was summoned before a grand jury in a proceeding under the Sherman anti-trust act, and upon being interrogated respecting certain transactions of the MacAndrews & Forbes Co., of which he was Secretary and Treasurer, refused to answer, on the ground that the Federal immunity law was not broad …
The Northern Securities Decision, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
The Northern Securities Decision, Horace Lafayette Wilgus
Articles
March 14 the Supreme Court of the United States decided one of the most important cases that has been before it for a number of years. The litigation referred to is the Northern Securities case. The question involved was whether the control of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railway companies through the ownership of the majority of the stock of each of those companies by the Securities company violated the national anti-trust act. The majority of the Supreme Court held it did, but four of the judges dissented.
Limits To State Control Of Private Business, Thomas M. Cooley
Limits To State Control Of Private Business, Thomas M. Cooley
Articles
The present purpose is to inquire whether, in the matter of the regulation of property rights and of business, legislation has not of late been occupying doubtful, possibly unconstitutional grounds. The discussion in the main must be limited to fundamental.-principles, aided by such light as legal and constitutional history may throw upon them, since the express provisions of the constitutions can give little assistance. They always contain the general guaranty of due process of law to life, liberty, and property, but in other particulars they for the most part leave protection to principles which have come from the common law. …