Law Commons^™

Agency Threats, Tim Wu

Duke Law Journal

Most legal writers are implicitly or explicitly critical of the use of threats as an alternative to rulemaking or adjudication. The general presumption is that the use of threats is a kind of symptom of an underlying malady - a broken rulemaking or adjudication process. For example, Professor Lars Noah describes the use of threats as an “intractable problem,” given the difficulty of “controlling the exercise of such wide-ranging discretionary power.” In this brief Essay, I write in defense of regulatory threats in particular contexts.

The use of threats instead of law can be a useful choice - not simply …

Shareholder Value And Auditor Independence, William W. Bratton

Duke Law Journal

This Article questions the practice of framing problems concerning auditors' professional responsibility inside a principal-agent paradigm. If professional independence is to be achieved, auditors cannot be enmeshed in agency relationships with the shareholders of their audit clients. As agents, the auditors by definition become subject to the principal's control and cannot act independently. For the same reason, auditors' duties should be neither articulated in the framework of corporate law fiduciary duty, nor conceived relationally at all. These assertions follow from an inquiry into the operative notion of the shareholder-beneficiary. The Article unpacks the notion of the shareholder and tells a …

The Agency Theory Of The Attorney-Client Relationship: An Improper Justification For Holding Clients Responsible For Their Attorneys’ Procedural Errors, William R. Mureiko

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.