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Full-Text Articles in Law

Politics And The Business Corporation, Robert H. Sitkoff Dec 2003

Politics And The Business Corporation, Robert H. Sitkoff

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

This essay explores the policy bases for, and the political economy of, the law's long-standing regulation of corporate political speech. The essay has three parts. First, it contends that the conventional justifications for regulating corporate interventions in politics -- that corporate donations unnaturally skew the political discourse (bad politics) and that corporate political donations harm shareholders (agency costs) -- assume irrational investors and substantial capital market inefficiency. Drawing on public choice theory, the essay also explores the aim of retarding rent-seeking as an alternative justification for regulating corporate interventions in politics. Second, the essay reexamines the history of the regulation …


Trust Law, Corporate Law, And Capital Market Efficiency, Robert H. Sitkoff Nov 2003

Trust Law, Corporate Law, And Capital Market Efficiency, Robert H. Sitkoff

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

In both the publicly-traded corporation and the private donative trust a crucial task is to minimize the agency costs that arise from the separation of risk-bearing and management. But where the law of corporate governance evolved in the shadow of capital-market checks on agency costs, trust governance did not. Thus, even more than that of close corporations, the law and study of private trusts offers an illuminating counterfactual -- a control, as it were -­ for a playful thought experiment about the importance of capital market efficiency to the law and study of public corporations. The animating idea for this …


Should Congress Repeal Securities Class Action Reform?, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2003

Should Congress Repeal Securities Class Action Reform?, Adam C. Pritchard

Other Publications

The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 was designed to curtail class action lawsuits by the plaintiffs’ bar. In particular, the high-technology industry, accountants, and investment bankers thought that they had been unjustly victimized by class action lawsuits based on little more than declines in a company’s stock price. Prior to 1995, the plaintiffs’ bar had free rein to use the discovery process to troll for evidence to support its claims. Moreover, the high costs of litigation were a powerful weapon with which to coerce companies to settle claims. The plaintiffs’ bar and its allies in Congress have called …


Adr Without Borders, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 2003

Adr Without Borders, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

My task is to assess the ways in which alternative dispute resolution procedures may be adapted to deal with international labor disputes. ADR refers to various methods by which neutral third parties assist persons engaged in a conflict to settle their differences without involving the decision-making power of the state or other sanction-imposing body. Both mediation and arbitration are included. In mediation the neutral seeks to get the parties to agree on a mutually acceptable solution. In arbitration the neutral imposes a solution after presentations by the contending parties. A third term, conciliation, is sometimes used and generally connotes a …


Litigator's Thumbnail Guide To The Warn Act, David A. Santacroce Jan 2003

Litigator's Thumbnail Guide To The Warn Act, David A. Santacroce

Articles

When large companies choose to lay off workers or close down plants without prior notice, they can be subject to extensive liability under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), including 60 days backpay to all affected workers, daily fines to local government, and attorney fees generated during the suit. In the following article, the author presents the bare bones basics of WARN in order for employees and their advocates to understand how and when WARN applies.


Patents, Product Exclusivity, And Information Dissemination: How Law Directs Biopharmaceutical Research And Development, Rebecca S. Eisenberg Jan 2003

Patents, Product Exclusivity, And Information Dissemination: How Law Directs Biopharmaceutical Research And Development, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Other Publications

It's a great honor for me to be invited to deliver the Levine Distinguished Lecture at Fordham, and a great opportunity to try out some new ideas before this audience. As some of you know, I've been studying the role of patents in biomedical research and product development ("R&D") for close to twenty years now, with a particular focus on how patents work in "upstream" research in universities and biotechnology companies that are working on research problems that arise prior to "downstream" product development. But, of course, the patent strategies of these institutions are designed around the profits that everyone …


Competition, Corporate Responsibility, And The China Question, Jospeh Vining Jan 2003

Competition, Corporate Responsibility, And The China Question, Jospeh Vining

Other Publications

"Corporate responsibility" is not a peripheral matter. It is at the core of all decision-making on behalf of business corporations under American law. This paper examines the effort to add an exemption for "business" in corporate form to the exemptions from ordinary responsibility that are seen in other areas of activity - e.g., for the military, for lawyers in adversarial litigation, or for investigators in scientific research. It looks at a number of well known cases and points to the often neglected relevance of both the criminal law applicable to corporations as such, and the evolving professional responsibility of corporate …


Too Busy To Mind The Business? Monitoring By Directors With Multiple Board Appointments, Stephen P. Ferris, Murali Jagannathan, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2003

Too Busy To Mind The Business? Monitoring By Directors With Multiple Board Appointments, Stephen P. Ferris, Murali Jagannathan, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

We examine the number of external appointments held by corporate directors. Directors who serve larger firms and sit on larger boards are more likely to attract directorships. Consistent with Fama and Jensen (1983), we find that firm performance has a positive effect on the number of appointments held by a director. We find no evidence that multiple directors shirk their responsibilities to serve on board committees. We do not find that multiple directors are associated with a greater likelihood of securities fraud litigation. We conclude that the evidence does not support calls for limits on directorships held by an individual.


Questions To Ask Before You Join A Club, Laura N. Beny, Paul S. Bird, Franci J. Blassberg, Michael P. Harrell Jan 2003

Questions To Ask Before You Join A Club, Laura N. Beny, Paul S. Bird, Franci J. Blassberg, Michael P. Harrell

Articles

Despite the recent flurry of large transactions in which a consortium of private equity firms have teamed up to make joint bids and acquisitions, “club deals” themselves are not breaking news. In fact, they have been a staple of small- and middle-sized private equity M&A transactions for years. Recently, however, there has been a growing trend toward large club deals with enterprise values over $1 billion.1 Due to their size, complexity and, often, international dimension, these transactions have generated considerable attention in the business press and have prompted much discussion among private equity professionals and the limited partners whose money …