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Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Law
Philanthropy's Function: A Neo-Classical Reconsideration, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
Philanthropy's Function: A Neo-Classical Reconsideration, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
This essay lays the groundwork for a “new unified field theory” of philanthropy. That theory must have two complementary parts, an account of philanthropy’s core function and a measure of its performance, a metric for comparing philanthropic organizations both among themselves and with their counterparts in the for-profit, governmental, and household sectors. The essay first explains the need for such a measure, in both theory and practice. It then considers the critical shortcomings of today’s standard theory of philanthropy, which accounts for the philanthropic sector as subordinate and supplementary to our capitalist market economy and liberal democratic polity. Chief among …
Re-Focusing On Philanthropy: Revising And Re-Orienting The Standard Model, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
Re-Focusing On Philanthropy: Revising And Re-Orienting The Standard Model, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
This paper undertakes a detailed analysis of today’s standard theory of the philanthropic sector, in order to provide a new model that is both more accurate in its details and more comprehensive in its scope. The standard theory accounts for the philanthropic sector as subordinate and supplementary to our capitalist market economy and liberal democratic polity. That approach has two basic short-comings: Its explanation of both the state and philanthropy as adjuncts to the market fails to appreciate the ways in which all three sectors support and supplement each other. Even more basically, the standard model’s primary focus on the …
Tax Favors For Philanthropy: Should Our Republic Underwrite De Tocqueville's Democracy?, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
Tax Favors For Philanthropy: Should Our Republic Underwrite De Tocqueville's Democracy?, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
ABSTRACT This article critically reviews the current rationales for the federal income tax system’s favorable treatment of philanthropy, gives those rationales a new descriptive synthesis based on de Tocqueville’s account of American democracy, and offers a normative alternative based on neo-classical ethical and political theory. It first identifies the two basic normative questions: What is the function of philanthropy that warrants favorable tax treatment, and how well does favorable tax treatment advance that function? It then examines the answers of three distinct phases of normative tax theory: the traditional subsidy thesis, the antithetical technical definition of income theory, and a …
Sea Captains And Philosopher Kings: Melville's Billy Budd And Plato's Republic, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
Sea Captains And Philosopher Kings: Melville's Billy Budd And Plato's Republic, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
This article shows how Melville’s Billy Budd, rightly one of law and literature’s most widely studied canonical texts, answers Plato’s challenge in Book X of the Republic: Show how “poets” create better citizens, especially better rulers, or banish them from the commonwealth of reasoned law. Captain Vere is a flawed but instructive version of the Republic’s philosopher-king, even as his story is precisely the sort of “poetry” that Plato should willingly allow, by his own republican principles, into the ideal polity. Not surprisingly, the novella shows how law’s agents must be wise, even as their law must be philosophical, if …
Philanthropy's Future: Questioning Today's Orthodoxies, Re-Affirming Yesterday's Foundations, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
Philanthropy's Future: Questioning Today's Orthodoxies, Re-Affirming Yesterday's Foundations, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
This article maps a way beyond an impasse in today’s treatment of philanthropy in both theory and law by taking us back to philanthropy’s core function, uplifting our neediest and advancing our best. The standard academic model of philanthropy sees it as subordinate and supplemental to our society’s other public sectors, the market and the state, and uses their metrics, aggregate consumer demand and majority voter preference, to measure philanthropy’s performance. Thus the standard model gives us, as individuals and as a society, no single measure of philanthropy’s traditional goal, the public good, besides consumer and voter preference. This article …
Neoclassical Professionalism In Law And Business, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
Neoclassical Professionalism In Law And Business, Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
Robert E. Atkinson Jr.
This paper offers a neo-classical approach to corporate reform: Remodeling the private practice of corporate law and the management of for-profit business to make both occupations better serve, together, their proper public functions. Without dismissing the recent focus of reform on external regulation of corporations or internal restructuring of corporate governance, this paper seeks the foundation for a different approach, encouraging corporate managers and lawyers as professionals to serve their occupation’s correlate values: prosperity and justice. This focus on the primary agents of modern capitalism, corporate managers and lawyers, responds both to early management reformers like Brandeis in the U.S. …