Law Commons^™

3d Printing And Healthcare: Will Laws, Lawyers, And Companies Stand In The Way Of Patient Care?, Evan R. Youngstrom

Evan R. Youngstrom

Today, our society is on a precipice of significant advancement in healthcare because 3D printing will usher in the next generation of medicine. The next generation will be driven by customization, which will allow doctors to replace limbs and individualize drugs. However, the next generation will be without large pharmaceutical companies and their justifications for strong intellectual property rights. However, the current patent system (which is underpinned by a social tradeoff made from property incentives) is not flexible enough to cope with 3D printing’s rapid development. Very soon, the social tradeoff will no longer benefit society, so it must be …

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) …

Is Moderation The Highest Virtue? A Comparative Study Of A Middle Way Of Control Transaction Regimes, Yueh-Ping Yang, Pin-Hsien Lee

Yueh-Ping Yang

Comparative studies of control transaction regimes mostly compare between the Market Rule as adopted in the U.S. and the General Offer Rule ad adopted in European Union, while paying less attention to the Partial Offer Rule, a middle way model adopted in many East Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, etc. In this paper, we attempt to fill this gap by highlighting the Partial Offer Rule adopted in these countries, analyzing this rule’s theoretical foundation and observing its implementation in practice. Our theoretical analyses of the Partial Offer Rule are comprised of two parts. First, by adding …

A Rational Approach To Business Entity Choice, Eric Franklin

Eric H. Franklin

Choosing the correct legal entity for a business is a decision that should not be taken lightly. For an entrepreneur, the legal entity decision carries consequences that will affect vital aspects of the business, including how it will be managed, taxed, and viewed by the public. Unfortunately, entrepreneurs generally give this decision little attention and make the choice without legal or tax advice. Compounding the issue is the fact that many states offer a dizzying number of legal entity forms. Indeed, many states offer more than a dozen different legal entity forms, despite the fact that most of these forms …

Law And Finance: The Case Of Stock Market Development In China, Zhong Zhang Dr

Zhong Zhang Dr

Having grown to one of the largest in the world in just over two decades, the stock market of China is cited as a counterexample to the significance of law for financial market development. A thorough examination of the development of China’s stock market however finds that law is actually critical to sustaining market growth and law did play a role in the growth of the market. On the other hand, the trajectory of development in China is growth first followed by law, and the improvement of law is caused by market growth. The experience of China hence suggests that …

After Citizens United: Extending The Liberal Revolution To The Multinational Corporation, Daniel J.H. Greenwood

Daniel J.H. Greenwood

This Article proposes several routes to reverse Citizens United, the Supreme Court case holding that corporate campaign spending is “speech” protected by the First Amendment.

The core problem of Citizens United is that corporations are illegitimate participants in our politics. Corporate law requires corporate officers to pursue the corporate interest. They are thus disqualified from considering the central political questions of a democratic capitalist country: defining the rules of the market (which define corporate interests) and balancing profit against other, more important, values.

The high road to fixing Citizens United is a constitutional amendment to extend the fundamental insights …

Puzzles In Controlling Shareholder Regimes And China: Shareholder Primacy And (Quasi) Monopoly, Sang Yop Kang

Sang Yop Kang

Professor Mark Roe explained that the shareholder wealth maximization norm (“the norm”) is not fit for a country with a (quasi) monopoly, because the norm encourages managers to maximize monopoly rents, to the detriment of the national economy. This Article provides new findings and counter-intuitive arguments as to the tension created by the norm and (quasi) monopoly by exploring three key corporate governance concepts that Roe did not examine—(1) “controlling minority structure” (CMS), where dominant shareholders hold a fractional ownership in their controlled-corporations, (2) “tunneling” (i.e., illicit transfer of corporate wealth to controlling shareholders), and (3) Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). …

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 …

Limiting Leukophobia: Looking Beyond Lockup. Debunking The Strategy Of Turning White Collars Orange, Jared J. Hight

Jared J Hight

The legal and political landscape of the past 30 years has resulted in the abandonment of the utilitarian principle of parsimony as applied to white collar criminals. In response to preceding decades of minor punishments meted out for serious white collar crimes, the Federal Sentencing Commission abandoned the typical past practices of sentencing judges and instead formulated Guidelines that are wildly excessive and no longer balance the need for community safety with the need for that same community to remain economically efficient. The guiding principles of deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation have been deemphasized in a new model that focuses primarily …

Mistakes, Airfares, And Consumers: Restoring The Department Of Transportation's Role In Regulating Unfair Trade Practices, Terence Lau

Terence Lau

This Article traces the problem of mistake airfares and the federal government’s response to airlines that cancel tickets for erroneous fares. Part I of the Article explores airline pricing generally, and argues that airline tickets are a unique form of commodity good, one where there is no consumer expectation of a reasonable price. The dynamic nature of airline yield management means that prices for the exact same seat on an airplane can range dramatically on a variety of circumstances and factors that are beyond the knowledge, control or comprehension of the ordinary consumer. The Article investigates several well-known examples of …

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

Rick Beaumont

No abstract provided.

The Moral Undercurrent Beneath The Regulatory Regime Of Investor Protection, Huhnkie Lee

Huhnkie Lee

No abstract provided.

Empirical Study Redux On Choice Of Law And Forum In M&A: The Data And Its Limits, Juliet P. Kostritsky, Wojbor Woyczynski, Harold Haller, Kyle Chen

Juliet P Kostritsky

No abstract provided.

Business Benefits Of Attorneys And Cpas Collaborating, Biana Borukhovich, Ariel Gamburg

Biana Borukhovich

No abstract provided.

Person, State Or Not: The Place Of Business Corporations In Our Constitutional Order, Daniel J.H. Greenwood

Daniel J.H. Greenwood

Business corporations are critical institutions in our democratic republican market-based economic order. The United States Constitution, however, is completely silent as to their status in our system. The Supreme Court has filled this silence by repeatedly granting corporations rights against the citizenry and its elected representatives.

Instead, we ought to view business corporations, like municipal corporations, as governance structures created by We the People to promote our general Welfare. On this social contract view, corporations should have the constitutional rights specified in the text: none. Instead, we should be debating which rights of citizens against governmental agencies should also apply …

Broad Shareholder Value And The Inevitable Role Of Conscience, Paul D. Weitzel, Zachariah J. Rodgers

Paul D. Weitzel

This article proposes an integrative solution to the modern debate on corporate purpose, the question of whether directors and officers must solely maximize profits or whether they may consider the effects on employees, the environment or the community. Many find pure profit maximization unseemly and suggest alternative theories, typically arguing that corporations owe a duty to a broader range of stakeholders. This position is inconsistent with the case law and unnecessary to allow conscience in the board room. We resolve the issue more simply by acknowledging that the purpose of a corporation is to promote the shareholders’ interests, which includes …

The Impact Of Hedge Fund Activism: Evidence And Implications, John C. Coffee, Jr., Darius Palia

John C Coffee, Jr.

Hedge Fund activism has increased almost hyperbolically. Some view this optimistically as a means for bridging the separation of ownership and control; others are more pessimistic, seeing mainly wealth transfers from bondholders or speculative expectations of a takeover as fueling the spike. Equivalent division exists over the impact of this increased activism, with optimists seeing real gains that do not erode over time and improvements in operating performance, and pessimists finding shortened investment horizons, increased leverage, and reduced investment in research and development.

Our perspective is analytic. We begin by surveying the regulatory and institutional developments that have reduced the …

Examining Success, Jonathan C. Lipson

Jonathan C. Lipson

Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code presumes that managers will remain in possession and control of a corporate debtor. This presents an obvious agency problem: these same managers may have gotten the company into trouble in the first place. The Bankruptcy Code thus includes checks and balances in the reorganization process, one of which is supposed to be an “examiner,” a private individual appointed to investigate and report on the debtor’s collapse.

We study their use in practice. Extending prior research, we find that examiners are exceedingly rare, despite the fact that they should be “mandatory” in large cases ($5 …

Law, Fugitive Capital, And Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation, Walter J. Kendall Lll

Walter J. Kendall lll

No abstract provided.

Deferred Corporate Prosecution As Corrupt Regime: The Case For Prison

Lawrence E. Mitchell

Abstract: This paper looks at the growing phenomenon of deferred corporate criminal prosecutions from a new perspective. The literature accepts the practice and is largely concerned with the degree to which efficient and effective criminal deterrence is achieved through pretrial diversion. I examine the practice and conclude that it presents, from a structural perspective, a case of a corrupt law enforcement regime centered in the United States Department of Justice. The regime works in effective –if unintentional-- conspiracy with corporate officials to produce an inefficient enforcement regime that disregards democratic processes and threatens a loss of respect for the rule …

Nothing To Do With Personhood: Corporate Constitutional Rights And The Principle Of Confiscation, Paul Kens Dr.

Paul Kens Dr.

In its 2010 decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission the Supreme Court overruled a federal statute that limited a corporation’s ability to pay for political advertising out of its general treasury funds. Those limits, it ruled, violated the corporation’s right to freedom of speech. The case has since become notorious for the widely held belief that, in doing so, the Court declared that corporations are “persons,” possessing the same constitutional rights as flesh and blood human beings. Four years later the Court seemed to expand on this conclusion when it ruled in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that a general …

Enduring Design For Business Entities, William E. Foster

William E Foster

The success or failure of an institution may hinge on some of the earliest decisions of its founders. In constitutional design literature, endurance is a widely accepted drafting objective. Indeed, constitutional endurance is positively associated with prosperous and stable societies. Like drafters of constitutions, business organizers have almost innumerable objectives for their enterprises, and attorneys drafting organizational documents must take into account these myriad goals. Oftentimes the drafting process fails to fully address some of the most important of these aims and results in suboptimal structures that lack predictability and reliability. This article looks specifically at small business organizations and …

Securities Fraud Damages Under The Pslra, Mohammed A. Misbah

Mohammed A Misbah

The United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act ("PSLRA") implemented several substantive changes affecting certain cases brought under the federal securities laws. It was designed to reduce the number of “frivolous” securities lawsuits filed in federal courts. Prior to the PSLRA, a securities fraud case could proceed with minimal evidence and use pre-trial discovery to search for more evidence that strongly suggested a deliberate fraud. Under the PSLRA plaintiffs need such evidence simply in order to commence an action. This article seeks to explain what evidence is required of a plaintiff in a security fraud case, in order to defeat …

Activist Compensation Of Board Nominees & The Middle Ground Response, Adam Prestidge

Adam Prestidge

Shareholder activism has taken an increasingly high-profile and polarizing role in investing and corporate governance. Moves by shareholder activists, and the policy behind those moves, constantly appear in corporate headlines. One of shareholder activists’ primary methods of enacting changes in companies is to nominate directors to the board, and often those director nominees are highly-compensated by the shareholder activist itself. Some in the corporate world oppose this practice, arguing that it creates a significant conflict of interest and can damage the company in the short term, while others argue that the practice is a necessary tool for investors that may …

Legal And Institutional Remedies For Middle East States Wishing To Develop And Increase Foreign Direct Investment, Griffin Weaver

Griffin Weaver

The cost to overhaul a legal system is astronomical. For example, before and after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1980’s several states received billions of dollars in loans to help change their “legal systems” and make them more western friendly. A couple of these states were West Germany and Japan, which received roughly 1.5 billion and 2.4 billion USD in loans. Considering most of this money was given in the 1950’s, the value today is probably three times or more those amounts. Without this aid both states would have been unable to make the changes to their …

How Corporate Political Spending Strains The Limits Of The Business Judgment Rule, David Rosenberg

David Rosenberg

A number of agency issues arise when a corporation chooses to exercise its freedom of speech by making donations to a super PAC or other political organization. This article draws a distinction between contributions designed to influence legislation and regulation of the corporation and political donations that corporations justify as goodwill or community outreach. Analyzing the issue with an emphasis on the duty of loyalty, the article argues that much corporate political spending cannot really be understood as a business decision that should enjoy the protection of the business judgment rule. It also reflects on the Supreme Court’s recent decision …

Context Matters--What Lawyers Say About Choice Of Law Decisions In Merger Agreements, Juliet P. Kostritsky

Juliet P Kostritsky

ABSTRACT: The study of choice of law provisions in merger agreements yields various theories as to how much thought parties put into them, and what factors influence such decisions. Eisenberg and Miller found a shift to New York law and other scholars later hypothesized that parties specify New York law rather than Delaware law because New York law is more formalistic. However, a study of 343 merger agreements, consisting of 15 lawyer interviews and a survey sent to 812 lawyers, suggests differently. First, there is no shift from Delaware to New York. Second, a desire for formalistic law is not …

Against Regulatory Displacement: An Institutional Analysis Of Financial Crises, Jonathan C. Lipson

Jonathan C. Lipson

This paper uses “institutional analysis”—the study of the relative capacities of markets, courts, and regulators—to make three claims about financial crises.

First, financial crises are increasingly a problem of “regulatory displacement.” Through the ad hoc rescues of 2008 and the Dodd-Frank reforms of 2010, regulators displace market and judicial processes that ordinarily prevent financial distress from becoming financial crises. Because regulators are vulnerable to capture by large financial services firms, however, they cannot address the pathologies that create crises: market concentration and complexity. Indeed, regulators may inadvertently aggravate these conditions through resolution tactics that consolidate firms, and the volume and …

Bank Resolution In The European Banking Union: A Transatlantic Perspective On What It Would Take, Jeffrey N. Gordon

Jeffrey N Gordon

The project of creating a European Banking Union is designed to overcome the fatal link between sovereigns and their banks in the Eurozone. As part of this project, political agreement for a common supervision framework and a common resolution scheme has been reached with difficulty. However, the resolution framework is weak, underfunded and exhibits some serious flaws. Further, Member States’ disagreements appear to rule out a federalized deposit insurance scheme, commonly regarded as the necessary third pillar of a successful Banking Union. This paper argues for an organizational and capital structure substitute for these two shortcomings that can minimize the …