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Gandhi’S Prophecy: Corporate Violence And A Mindful Law For Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel Dec 2015

Gandhi’S Prophecy: Corporate Violence And A Mindful Law For Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel

Nehal A. Patel

AbstractOver thirty years have passed since the Bhopal chemical disaster began,and in that time scholars of corporate social responsibility (CSR) havediscussed and debated several frameworks for improving corporate responseto social and environmental problems. However, CSR discourse rarelydelves into the fundamental architecture of legal thought that oftenbuttresses corporate dominance in the global economy. Moreover, CSRdiscourse does little to challenge the ontological and epistemologicalassumptions that form the foundation for modern economics and the role ofcorporations in the world.I explore methods of transforming CSR by employing the thought ofMohandas Gandhi. I pay particular attention to Gandhi’s critique ofindustrialization and principle of swadeshi (self-sufficiency) …


Some Key Things Entrepreneurs Need To Know About The Law And Lawyers, Lawrence J. Trautman, Anthony Luppino, Malika S. Simmons Sep 2015

Some Key Things Entrepreneurs Need To Know About The Law And Lawyers, Lawrence J. Trautman, Anthony Luppino, Malika S. Simmons

Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.

New business formation is a powerful economic engine that creates jobs. Diverse legal issues are encountered as a start-up entity approaches formation, initial capitalization and fundraising, arrangements with employees and independent contractors, and relationships with other third parties. The endeavors of a typical start-up in the United States will likely implicate many of the following areas of law: intellectual property; business organizations; tax laws; employment and labor laws; securities regulation; contracts and licensing agreements; commercial sales; debtor-creditor relations; real estate law; health and safety laws/codes; permits and licenses; environmental protection; industry specific regulatory laws and approval processes; tort/personal injury, products …


Who Sits On Texas Corporate Boards? Texas Corporate Directors: Who They Are And What They Do, Lawrence J. Trautman Sep 2015

Who Sits On Texas Corporate Boards? Texas Corporate Directors: Who They Are And What They Do, Lawrence J. Trautman

Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.

Corporate directors play an important role in governing American business, in the capital formation process, and are fundamental to the stewardship of economic growth. Texas businesses play a disproportionately important role among the states in aggregate U.S. job creation, responsible for 37% of all net new American jobs since the post 2008-2009 recovery began. It is the job of the board of directors to govern the corporation. The duties and responsibilities of a corporate director include: the duty of care; duty of loyalty; and duty of good faith. This paper results from the author’s previously assembled biographical data for most …


Dismissing Provenance: The Use Of Procedural Defenses To Bar Claims In Nazi-Looted Art And Securitized Mortgage Litigation, Christian J. Bromley Sep 2015

Dismissing Provenance: The Use Of Procedural Defenses To Bar Claims In Nazi-Looted Art And Securitized Mortgage Litigation, Christian J. Bromley

Christian J Bromley

The litigation surrounding an estimated 650,000 works looted by the Nazis in the Second World War and the millions of securitized mortgages foreclosed in the wake of the Great Recession converge on a fundamental legal principle: who really holds rightful title? Seemingly worlds apart, these separate yet remarkably similar forms of property challenge the American judiciary to allocate property rights between adversaries steadfast in their contention of rightful ownership. The legal fulcrum in this allocation often rests not on the equity or righteousness of either parties’ claim—whether museum versus heir or bank versus former homeowner—but instead on procedural defenses that …


Conflicted Counselors: Retaliation Protections For Attorney-Whistleblowers In An Inconsistent Regulatory Regime, Jennifer M. Pacella Aug 2015

Conflicted Counselors: Retaliation Protections For Attorney-Whistleblowers In An Inconsistent Regulatory Regime, Jennifer M. Pacella

Jennifer M. Pacella, Esq.

Attorneys, especially in-house counsel, are subject to retaliation by employers in much the same way as traditional whistleblowers, often experiencing retaliation and loss of livelihood for reporting instances of wrongdoing about their clients. Although attorney-whistleblowing undoubtedly invokes ethical concerns, attorneys who “appear and practice” before the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) are required by federal law to act as internal whistleblowers under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (“SOX”) and report evidence of material violations of the law within the organizations that they represent. An attorney’s failure to comply with these obligations will result in SEC-imposed civil penalties and disciplinary action. Recent federal …


Democratizing Startups, Seth C. Oranburg Aug 2015

Democratizing Startups, Seth C. Oranburg

Seth C Oranburg

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 intends to “help entrepreneurs raise the capital they need to put Americans back to work and create an economy that’s built to last.” The goal is to “democratize startups” by making capital available to diverse entrepreneurs in new geographies. Yet the net effect of securities regulations and market conditions is the opposite. Startup companies are encouraged to stay private so capital is consolidating in large, mature firms instead of recycling into new startups. Evidence of consolidation is that once-rare “Unicorns” (billion-dollar startups) now number over 111. More money is going into huge …


The Customary Practice Of Gerawee In Afghanistan: A Case For Transitioning To Real Equity-Based Finance, Haroun Rahimi Aug 2015

The Customary Practice Of Gerawee In Afghanistan: A Case For Transitioning To Real Equity-Based Finance, Haroun Rahimi

Haroun Rahimi

The customary practice of Gerawee, in principle, refers to a specific form of synthetic loan. It is a pledge-lease transaction that enables owners of immovable properties to obtain financing based on the market value of those properties in exchange for either paying regular payments in form of rent or transferring the right to lease those properties to a financer. The practice has been developed to help debtors and creditors avoid the prohibition of interest bearing loans under Shari’ah. Despite the efforts of some Muslim jurists to justify the practice under Shari’ah, it is widely criticized. In particular, Afghan muftis …


An Approach To The Regulation Of Spanish Banking Foundations, Miguel Martínez Jun 2015

An Approach To The Regulation Of Spanish Banking Foundations, Miguel Martínez

Miguel Martínez

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the legal framework governing banking foundations as they have been regulated by Spanish Act 26/2013, of December 27th, on savings banks and banking foundations. Title 2 of this regulation addresses a construct that is groundbreaking for the Spanish legal system, still of paramount importance for the entire financial system insofar as these foundations become the leading players behind certain banking institutions given the high interest that foundations hold in the share capital of such institutions.


Avenues To Foreign Investment In China’S Shipping Industry—Have Lease Financing Arrangements And The Free Trade Zones Opened Markets For Foreign Non-Bank Investment?, Rick Beaumont Jun 2015

Avenues To Foreign Investment In China’S Shipping Industry—Have Lease Financing Arrangements And The Free Trade Zones Opened Markets For Foreign Non-Bank Investment?, Rick Beaumont

Rick Beaumont

No abstract provided.


Avenues To Foreign Investment In China’S Shipping Industry—Have Lease Financing Arrangements And The Free Trade Zones Opened Markets For Foreign Non-Bank Investment?, Rick Beaumont May 2015

Avenues To Foreign Investment In China’S Shipping Industry—Have Lease Financing Arrangements And The Free Trade Zones Opened Markets For Foreign Non-Bank Investment?, Rick Beaumont

Rick Beaumont

No abstract provided.


Discriminatory Internal Taxation In The European Union: The Power Of The European Court Of Justice To Limit The Tax Sovereignty Of Member-States Under Article 110 Of The Tfeu, Jarrod Tudor Apr 2015

Discriminatory Internal Taxation In The European Union: The Power Of The European Court Of Justice To Limit The Tax Sovereignty Of Member-States Under Article 110 Of The Tfeu, Jarrod Tudor

Jarrod Tudor

Protectionism can come in a variety of methods including the use of internal taxation policies that discriminate against imports making those imports more expensive on the domestic market and thus favoring domestically-produced goods. Discriminatory taxation policies have been developed by member-states to mask protectionism by distinguishing products based on import status, product similarity, product life cycle, consumption, tax collection practices, transportation charges, and state aid. The Framers of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) wrote Article 110 with the objective in mind to prohibit internal taxation policies from discriminating against goods in made in other member-states. …


Recovery Of Damages For Lost Profits: The Historical Development, Robert M. Lloyd, Nicholas J. Chase Mar 2015

Recovery Of Damages For Lost Profits: The Historical Development, Robert M. Lloyd, Nicholas J. Chase

Robert M Lloyd

ABSTRACT Recovery of Damages for Lost Profits: The Historical Development The rule of Hadley v. Baxendale is widely considered the most important rule of contract damages. In fact, however, the rule that damages must be proven with reasonable certainty is far more important in the modern practice of law. The reasonable certainty rule originated in Roman law and came to the common law through the civil law of Western Europe, developing first in the United States and spreading from the United States to England. The rule of Hadley v. Baxendale developed much in the same way, and, contrary to popular …


Bridgefunding Is Crowdfunding For Startups Across The Private Equity Gap, Seth C. Oranburg Feb 2015

Bridgefunding Is Crowdfunding For Startups Across The Private Equity Gap, Seth C. Oranburg

Seth C Oranburg

Title III of the JOBS Act of 2012, which attempts to encourage entrepreneurship by allowing startups and small business to sell stock to the general public over the Internet through “crowdfunding,” is completely backwards. Its ceiling should be a floor—the $1 million limit should be inverted. By capping startups at raising $1 million from crowdfunding, the JOBS Act does not address the private equity gap, a fundamental problem in startup markets, and exposes unsophisticated investors to risk and fraud. This Article presents a regulatory framework premised on “bridgefunding,” an approach that this article develops to protect new investors by encouraging …


Optimized Theft: Why Some Controlling Shareholders “Generously” Expropriate From Minority Shareholders, Sang Yop Kang Jan 2015

Optimized Theft: Why Some Controlling Shareholders “Generously” Expropriate From Minority Shareholders, Sang Yop Kang

Sang Yop Kang

Although controlling shareholder agency problems have been well studied so far, many questions still remain unanswered. In particular, an important puzzle in a bad-law jurisdiction is: why some controlling shareholders (“roving controllers”) loot the entire corporate assets at once, and why others (“stationary controllers”) siphon a part of corporate assets on a continuous basis. To solve this conundrum, this Article provides analytical frameworks exploring the behaviors and motivations of controlling shareholders. To begin with, I reinterpret Olson’s political theory of “banditry” in the context of corporate governance in developing countries. Based on a new taxonomy of controlling shareholders (“roving controllers” …


Dirty Debts Sold Dirt Cheap, Dalie Jimenez Dec 2014

Dirty Debts Sold Dirt Cheap, Dalie Jimenez

Dalie Jimenez

More than 77 million Americans have a debt in collections. Many of these debts will be sold to debt buyers for pennies, or fractions of pennies, on the dollar. This Article details the perilous path that debts travel as they move through the collection ecosystem. Using a unique dataset of 84 consumer debt purchase and sale agreement, it examines the manner in which debts are sold, oftentimes as simple data on a spreadsheet, devoid of any documentary evidence. It finds that in many contracts, sellers disclaim all warranties about the underlying debts sold or the information transferred. Sellers also sometimes …