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Seattle University School of Law

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Articles 241 - 251 of 251

Full-Text Articles in Agency

The Post-Revolutionary Period In Corporate Law: Returning To The Theory Of The Firm, Matthew T. Bodie Jun 2011

The Post-Revolutionary Period In Corporate Law: Returning To The Theory Of The Firm, Matthew T. Bodie

Seattle University Law Review

The consensus on corporate law theory has narrowed the field’s doctrinal and methodological foci. Although the vibrancy of shareholder primacy has at times been called into question as a matter of law, both boardrooms and courts have taken the normative call for shareholder wealth maximization increasingly to heart. There is little doubt that the revolution has not only substantially affected legal theory but also legislation, court decisions, and corporate behavior. It achieved a level of success unusual for an academic discipline; it not only transformed the field but also the world. We now find ourselves in the post-revolutionary period. For …


The Evolution Of The American Corporation And Global Organizational Biodiversity, Ugo Pagano Jun 2011

The Evolution Of The American Corporation And Global Organizational Biodiversity, Ugo Pagano

Seattle University Law Review

The Evolution of the Modern Corporate Structure has been one of the most influential chapters of The Modern Corporation & Private Property. But Berle and Means’s superb analysis is framed in the American context and cannot be easily generalized to other experiences. Their corporate model arose in a democratic country where “production engineers” commanded more respect than financiers and capitalist dynasties. Other countries followed different organizational paths, characterized by different institutional complementarities between labor and financial markets that generated “concentrated equilibria” different from the American “dispersed equilibrium.” This Article argues that the divide can be traced to the different aristocratic …


Consumer Lock-In And The Theory Of The Firm, David G. Yosifon Jun 2011

Consumer Lock-In And The Theory Of The Firm, David G. Yosifon

Seattle University Law Review

The advent of the modern corporation separated not only ownership from control but also production from consumption. The agency problem that arose between owners and managers of firms also emerged between producers and consumers. Just as corporations needed to lock-in capital to sustain large-scale operations, so too did they need to lock-in consumers to justify and reduce the risks of asset-specific investment. Large corporate operations succeeded because they solved both the capital and consumer lock-in challenges. This Article explores ways in which modern consumers, like shareholders, can find themselves in a very real sense locked into the corporations with which …


The Citizen Shareholder: Modernizing The Agency Paradigm To Reflect How And Why A Majority Of Americans Invest In The Market, Anne Tucker Jun 2011

The Citizen Shareholder: Modernizing The Agency Paradigm To Reflect How And Why A Majority Of Americans Invest In The Market, Anne Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines corporate law from the perspective of personal investment and discusses the economic realities of modern investments in order to understand the role of shareholders within the agency paradigm. Corporate law, its scholars, and suggested reforms traditionally focus on the internal organization of the corporation. For example, agency principles inform corporate law by acknowledging a potential conflict of interest between the managers and shareholders of a corporation. Reforms such as increased shareholder voting rights and proxy access, which seek to give shareholders a more direct means to make their interests known to managers, illustrate corporate law’s focus on …


We Don’T Need You Anymore: Corporate Social Responsibilities, Executive Class Interests, And Solving Mizruchi And Hirschman’S Paradox, Richard Marens Jun 2011

We Don’T Need You Anymore: Corporate Social Responsibilities, Executive Class Interests, And Solving Mizruchi And Hirschman’S Paradox, Richard Marens

Seattle University Law Review

Previously, Northern Italian, Dutch, and then English entrepreneurs had dominated global trade in turn, and when after a century or so their respective hegemonies began to show cracks, each group refocused its efforts in the service of tapping already-accumulated wealth through financial speculation and, in the process, also financed the rise of their successors.20 If Dahrendorf was correct, and American capital was managed during the era of American industrial dominance by “a class of career bureaucrats, whose primary loyalty lay with their employer rather than with a class of property owners,”21 there are good reasons to believe that that has …


Rethinking The Nature Of The Firm: The Corporation As A Governance Object, Peer Zumbansen Jun 2011

Rethinking The Nature Of The Firm: The Corporation As A Governance Object, Peer Zumbansen

Seattle University Law Review

This Article attempts to bridge two discourses—corporate governance and contract governance. Regarding the latter, a group of scholars has recently set out to develop a more comprehensive research agenda to explore the governance dimensions of contractual relations, highlighting the potential of contract theory to develop a more encompassing theory of social and economic transactions. While a renewed interest in the contribution of economic theory for a concept of contract governance drives one dimension of this research, another part of this undertaking has been to move contract theory closer to theories of social organization. Here, these scholars emphasize the “social” or …


The Treatment Of Nominee Corporations For Income Tax Purposes, Norton L. Steuben Jan 1993

The Treatment Of Nominee Corporations For Income Tax Purposes, Norton L. Steuben

Seattle University Law Review

This Article traces the development of the nonentity and agency approaches to the treatment of nominee corporations. The nonentity approach had a short lifespan and is of little use today. The agency approach, in contrast, experienced a period of development that resulted in a complex six-factor test that was employed in at least three circuits. When a conflict in the application of the six-factor test developed, the Supreme Court in Commissioner v. Bollinger enunciated a different approach and established a new, more workable standard. This Article explores the limitations of that standard as well as its practical application for planners.


Does The Agency Die When The Principal Becomes Mentally Incapacitated?, W. Alfred Mukatis Jan 1983

Does The Agency Die When The Principal Becomes Mentally Incapacitated?, W. Alfred Mukatis

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores the status of an agency when a competent principal enters into an agency relationship and thereafter becomes mentally incapacitated. On the one hand, does the status of the agency depend on factors relating to the principal such as type, length, or permanence of the incapacity? For instance, is the status of the agency the same when a principal lapses into a coma as it is when a conscious principal is incapacitated because of a mental disease such as schizophrenia? If in a coma, how does the length of the coma affect the status of the agency? Is …


Impacts Of The Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning And Conservation Act On The Development Of Energy Resources In The Pacific Northwest: An Analysis Of The Resource Acquisition Priority Scheme, Preston Michie Jan 1981

Impacts Of The Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning And Conservation Act On The Development Of Energy Resources In The Pacific Northwest: An Analysis Of The Resource Acquisition Priority Scheme, Preston Michie

Seattle University Law Review

This article discusses how the Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act may affect the region's choice of resources to construct. Potential choices range from conventional resources such as coal and nuclear to renewable resources such as geothermal, biomass, wave, tidal, solar, and wind. In addition, conservation and cogeneration are now viable energy alternatives. This discussion focuses on PNEPPCA's resource acquisition priority scheme and provides an overview of the incentives and disincentives which may influence the resource selection process. Rather than predicting which resources the region's utilities may ultimately construct, this article analyzes the legal barriers proponents of particular …


The Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning And Conservation Act-Solution For A Regional Dilemma, Henry M. Jackson Jan 1980

The Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning And Conservation Act-Solution For A Regional Dilemma, Henry M. Jackson

Seattle University Law Review

For the past four decades, the Bonneville Power Administration(BPA) has played a singular and powerful role in developing the Northwest regional electric power system, and indirectly in the regional economy that system supports. The federal government's decision during the first half of this century to develop multi-purpose water resource projects led to the construction of many dams, most of them in the Western United States, most built since the mid-1930s, and most including hydroelectric generation. As we enter the 1980s, fundamental changes have occurred. Historically, BPA has had sufficient resources to sell power to any utility or other customer in …


The Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning And Conservation (And Thermal Power Plant Relief) Act, Ralph Cavanagh Jan 1980

The Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning And Conservation (And Thermal Power Plant Relief) Act, Ralph Cavanagh

Seattle University Law Review

Supporters of the proposed Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act have not produced satisfactory answers to two fundamental questions. First, why does the region require significant new incentives for the construction of nuclear and coal-fired power plants? Second, why must Congress link urgently needed encouragement of conservation and renewable energy measures to the creation of such incentives?