Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Law and Society (62)
- Contracts (59)
- Law and Economics (54)
- Legal Profession (49)
- Banking and Finance Law (41)
-
- Securities Law (41)
- Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility (34)
- Antitrust and Trade Regulation (32)
- Agency (31)
- Organizations Law (29)
- Commercial Law (25)
- Other Law (18)
- International Law (15)
- Law and Philosophy (15)
- Religion Law (14)
- Public Law and Legal Theory (12)
- Legal History (10)
- Business (9)
- Common Law (9)
- Comparative and Foreign Law (7)
- Environmental Law (7)
- Jurisprudence (7)
- Labor and Employment Law (7)
- Legal Education (7)
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (7)
- State and Local Government Law (7)
- European Law (6)
- Judges (6)
- Institution
-
- Seattle University School of Law (74)
- Fordham Law School (7)
- University of Georgia School of Law (6)
- Washington University in St. Louis (6)
- Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University (5)
-
- Columbia Law School (4)
- Maurer School of Law: Indiana University (4)
- University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law (4)
- Case Western Reserve University School of Law (3)
- Notre Dame Law School (3)
- Pepperdine University (3)
- Washington and Lee University School of Law (3)
- BLR (2)
- Northwestern Pritzker School of Law (2)
- The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law (2)
- American University Washington College of Law (1)
- Barry University School of Law (1)
- Boston University School of Law (1)
- Georgia State University College of Law (1)
- SJ Quinney College of Law, University of Utah (1)
- Singapore Management University (1)
- Technological University Dublin (1)
- The Peter A. Allard School of Law (1)
- University at Buffalo School of Law (1)
- University of Florida Levin College of Law (1)
- University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law (1)
- University of Richmond (1)
- University of San Diego (1)
- University of South Carolina (1)
- University of the District of Columbia School of Law (1)
- Publication Year
- Publication
-
- Seattle University Law Review (74)
- Faculty Scholarship (8)
- Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law (6)
- Scholarship@WashULaw (6)
- Dalhousie Law Journal (5)
-
- Scholarly Works (5)
- Faculty Publications (4)
- Journal Articles (4)
- Indiana Law Journal (3)
- Scholarly Articles (3)
- Catholic University Law Review (2)
- ExpressO (2)
- Maryland Law Review (2)
- The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law (2)
- All Faculty Publications (1)
- American University Law Review (1)
- Articles (1)
- Articles by Maurer Faculty (1)
- Books (1)
- Faculty Works (1)
- Fordham Urban Law Journal (1)
- Georgia State University Law Review (1)
- LLM Theses and Essays (1)
- Law Faculty Publications (1)
- NULR Online (1)
- Northwestern University Law Review (1)
- Pepperdine Law Review (1)
- Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law (1)
- San Diego International Law Journal (1)
- UF Law Faculty Publications (1)
- Publication Type
Articles 91 - 120 of 145
Full-Text Articles in Business Organizations Law
The Modern Corporation Magnified: Managerial Accountability In Financial-Services Holding Companies, Anita K. Krug
The Modern Corporation Magnified: Managerial Accountability In Financial-Services Holding Companies, Anita K. Krug
Seattle University Law Review
This Article first recalls the primary contours of Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means’s acclaimed observations regarding the separation of ownership and control in the “modern corporation,” as well as their conclusions about the implications of those observations for the doctrine of shareholder primacy. Second, the Article describes how the activities of FSHCs generally differ from what we think corporations do and, certainly, from what Berle and Means conceived of as the purpose of corporations or, indeed, any business enterprise. Third, this Article articulates how those business activities render more acute the problem of the separation of ownership and control that …
Toward A More Resilient Financial System?, Joanna Gray
Toward A More Resilient Financial System?, Joanna Gray
Seattle University Law Review
The concept of “resilience” in the context of financial systems calls for closer analysis, as most of the current efforts to reshape financial systems seek to render them more resilient. Resilience has become a necessary complement to the paradigm shift taking place in global financial regulation toward “macroprudential” regulation—a term used to describe a new viewing platform and decisionmaking plane for financial regulation. From this new perspective, regulators can address the state of the financial system as a whole, as well as its component parts. This Article seeks to illustrate how legal and regulatory measures that foster resilience have become …
Financial Hospitals: Defending The Fed’S Role As A Market Maker Of Last Resort, José Gabilondo
Financial Hospitals: Defending The Fed’S Role As A Market Maker Of Last Resort, José Gabilondo
Seattle University Law Review
During the last financial crisis, what should the Federal Reserve (the Fed) have done when lenders stopped making loans, even to borrowers with sterling credit and strong collateral? Because the central bank is the last resort for funding, the conventional answer had been to lend freely at a penalty rate against good collateral, as Walter Bagehot suggested in 1873 about the Bank of England. Acting thus as a lender of last resort, the central bank will keep solvent banks liquid but let insolvent banks go out of business, as they should. The Fed tried this, but when the conventional wisdom …
The Long Road Back: Business Roundtable And The Future Of Sec Rulemaking, Jill E. Fisch
The Long Road Back: Business Roundtable And The Future Of Sec Rulemaking, Jill E. Fisch
Seattle University Law Review
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or Commission) has faced a number of challenges in the last few years. Judge Rakoff’s decision in Citigroup, the Madoff scandal, and the Business Roundtable decision are just a few of the developments that have dealt lasting damage to the SEC’s reputation. Critics have scrutinized the agency’s decisionmaking on multiple fronts—from its enforcement policy to the quality of its rulemaking—and the SEC has largely come up short in the analysis. The once-revered top cop of the securities markets has taken a hit, and it is unclear whether it can recover. The Business Roundtable decision …
The Future Of Shareholder Democracy In The Shadow Of The Financial Crisis, Alan Dignam
The Future Of Shareholder Democracy In The Shadow Of The Financial Crisis, Alan Dignam
Seattle University Law Review
This Article argues that the U.K. regulatory response to the financial crisis, in the form of “stewardship” and shareholder engagement, is an error built on a misunderstanding of the key active role shareholders played in the enormous corporate governance failure represented by the banking crisis. Shareholders’ passivity, rather than activity, has characterized the reform perception of the shareholder role in corporate governance. This characterization led to the conclusion that if only they were more active they would be more responsible “stewards” of the corporation. If, as this Article argues, shareholder activity was part of the problem in the banks, then …
Limits Of Disclosure, Steven M. Davidoff, Claire A. Hill
Limits Of Disclosure, Steven M. Davidoff, Claire A. Hill
Seattle University Law Review
One big focus of attention, criticism, and proposals for reform in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis has been securities disclosure. Many commentators have emphasized the complexity of the securities being sold, arguing that no one could understand the disclosure. Some observers have noted that disclosures were sometimes false or incomplete. What follows these issues, to some commentators, is that, whatever other lessons we may learn from the crisis, we need to improve disclosure. How should it be improved? Commentators often lament the frailties of human understanding, notably including those of everyday retail investors—people who do not understand or …
The Market For Corporate Control: New Insights From The Financial Crisis In Ireland, Blanaid Clarke
The Market For Corporate Control: New Insights From The Financial Crisis In Ireland, Blanaid Clarke
Seattle University Law Review
In an ever-changing legal and economic environment, it is incumbent on us to subject all such premises to scrutiny in order to consider their continued application. This Article considers the effect of the MCC on the management of Irish credit institutions in the run-up to the financial crisis. Part II sets the background by explaining how the MCC has become an integral part of takeover regulation in Europe. The weaknesses in the efficient market hypothesis, which underlie the MCC and are summarized in Part III, appear not to have undermined the theory’s credibility in the minds of public policy makers …
Banking And Competition In Exceptional Times, Brett Christophers
Banking And Competition In Exceptional Times, Brett Christophers
Seattle University Law Review
This Article has two main aims: to provide a critical consideration of this contemporary antitrust “revival” from an explicitly political–economic perspective and to point toward some theoretical resources that might facilitate such an assessment.Part II looks backward at the evolution and application of competition law in the banking sector over the relatively longue durée. In this Part, I invoke the concept of “exception” to understand how antitrust policy has developed, and my chief interlocutors are the perhaps unlikely figures of Giorgio Agamben and Karl Marx. Part III looks forward and considers the central question around which the recent resurgence of …
Conceptions Of Corporate Purpose In Post-Crisis Financial Firms, Christopher M. Bruner
Conceptions Of Corporate Purpose In Post-Crisis Financial Firms, Christopher M. Bruner
Seattle University Law Review
American “populism” has had a major impact on the development of U.S. corporate governance throughout its history. Specifically, appeals to the perceived interests of average working people have exerted enormous social and political influence over prevailing conceptions of corporate purpose—that is, the aims toward which society expects corporate decision-making to be directed. In this Article, I assess the impact of American populism upon prevailing conceptions of corporate purpose, contrasting its unique expression in the context of financial firms with that arising in other contexts. I then examine its impact upon corporate governance reforms enacted in the wake of the financial …
Shareholders And Social Welfare, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
Shareholders And Social Welfare, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
Seattle University Law Review
This Article addresses the questions of whether and how shareholders matter for social welfare, finding that different and contrasting answers have prevailed during different periods of recent history. Observers in the mid-twentieth century believed that the socioeconomic characteristics of real-world shareholders were highly pertinent to social welfare inquiries. But those observers went on to conclude that there followed no justification for catering to shareholder interest, for shareholders occupied elite social strata. The answer changed during the twentieth century’s closing decades, when observers came to accord the shareholder interest a key structural role in the enhancement of economic efficiency even as …
Central Bank-Led Capitalism?, Andrew Bowman Et Al.
Central Bank-Led Capitalism?, Andrew Bowman Et Al.
Seattle University Law Review
Since the first acute episode of financial crisis in autumn 2008, the world has manifestly changed in dramatic ways that reinforce skepticism and challenge the old assumptions of political economy. Hence this Article about central banks, whose pivotal role in post-crisis capitalism has not been adequately politically or theoretically addressed in any existing literature and can now be opened up by a conjunctural analysis that recognises uncertainty and mutability. There are several reasons why this is an intellectually and politically interesting task. Central banks have become an object of controversy and public attention after being pivotally involved in crisis management, …
Making Money: Leverage And Private Sector Money Creation, Margaret M. Blair
Making Money: Leverage And Private Sector Money Creation, Margaret M. Blair
Seattle University Law Review
Contrary to the beliefs of most macroeconomists, the financial sector in the United States has grown too large in the last few decades as a consequence of financial innovation that has encouraged the use of too much “leverage” (financing with debt) by financial institutions (as well as by consumers and other borrowers). In Part II, I connect the dots between excessive leverage, risk, and financial market volatility. In Part III, I explore the role that the “shadow-banking sector” has had in driving leverage. In Part IV, I explain why leverage at the level of financial institutions matters for the macroeconomy. …
The Governance And Disclosure Of The Firm As An Enterprise Entity, Yuri Biondi
The Governance And Disclosure Of The Firm As An Enterprise Entity, Yuri Biondi
Seattle University Law Review
During recent decades, the rapid pace of financial markets involving new modes of management, governance, and regulation has framed business firms. This corporate drift toward financialization is summarized under the “shareholder value” label. What do financial markets do? Unequivocally, they organize trading on shares that are securities: tradable financial entitlements established by law, which formalize expectations, and claims of financial rents paid by the issuing company. Actually, how continued quotation on share exchanges came to be the barometer of economic or social welfare is a different matter. The latter adoption has required quite a great leap from “the euthanasia of …
Rationales And Designs To Implement An Institutional Big Bang In The Governance Of Global Finance, Emilios Avgouleas
Rationales And Designs To Implement An Institutional Big Bang In The Governance Of Global Finance, Emilios Avgouleas
Seattle University Law Review
The colossal challenges facing international finance pertain to both its governance system and its dual utility and speculative functions, which have become ever more intertwined with the advent of financial innovation. In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), a number of significant reforms are under way to address the second issue, including additional capital and liquidity requirements for banks, measures to battle interconnectedness in the financial sector, new resolution regimes that would allow banks to fail more easily, and stricter frameworks for bank supervision and monitoring of systemic risk. Yet limited progress has been made with respect to …
Framing Address: A Framework For Analyzing Financial Market Transformation, Steven L. Schwarcz
Framing Address: A Framework For Analyzing Financial Market Transformation, Steven L. Schwarcz
Seattle University Law Review
The title of this Symposium originally was “Rethinking Financial and Securities Markets.” It is, of course, somewhat presumptuous for scholars to try to rethink financial markets per se. Markets, including financial markets, are driven primarily by supply and demand. But scholars can and should try to influence the future of financial markets by rethinking their fundamental aspects. This Symposium presents work from leading scholars in the fields of law, economics, finance, and accounting. I will try to frame the discussion from the perspectives of these four disciplines. First, however, we need to identify what it is about financial markets that …
Unsettledness In Delaware Corporate Law: Business Judgment Rule, Corporate Purpose, Lyman P. Q. Johnson
Unsettledness In Delaware Corporate Law: Business Judgment Rule, Corporate Purpose, Lyman P. Q. Johnson
Scholarly Articles
This Article revisits two fundamental issues in corporate law. One — the central role of the business judgment rule in fiduciary litigation — involves a great deal of seemingly settled law, while the other — is there a mandated corporate purpose — has very little law. Using the emergent question of whether the business judgment rule should be used in analyzing officer and controlling shareholder fiduciary duties, the latter issue having recently been addressed by Chancellor Strine in the widely-heralded MFW decision, this Article proposes a fundamental rethinking of the rule’s analytical preeminence. For a variety of reasons, it is …
Conceptions Of Corporate Purpose In Post-Crisis Financial Firms, Christopher M. Bruner
Conceptions Of Corporate Purpose In Post-Crisis Financial Firms, Christopher M. Bruner
Scholarly Articles
American "populism" has had a major impact on the development of U.S. corporate governance throughout its history. Specifically, appeals to the perceived interests of average working people have exerted enormous social and political influence over prevailing conceptions of corporate purpose - the aims toward which society expects corporate decision-making to be directed. This article assesses the impact of American populism upon prevailing conceptions of corporate purpose - contrasting its unique expression in the context of financial firms with that arising in other contexts - and then examines its impact upon corporate governance reforms enacted in the wake of the financial …
Persuasion Treaties, Melissa (M.J.) Durkee
Persuasion Treaties, Melissa (M.J.) Durkee
Scholarship@WashULaw
All treaties formalize promises made by national parties. Yet there is a fundamental difference between two kinds of treaty promise. This difference divides all treaties into two categories: treaties that govern the behavior of state parties and their agents fall in one category; treaties in the second category—those I call “persuasion” treaties—commit state parties to changing the behavior of non-state actors as well. The difference is important because the compliance problems for the two sets of treaties sharply diverge. Persuasion treaties merit our systematic attention because they are both theoretically and practically significant. In areas such as international environmental affairs, …
Federal Judicial And Legislative Jurisdiction Over Entities Abroad: The Long-Arm Of U.S. Antitrust Law And Viable Solutions Beyond The Timberlane/Restatement Comity Approach, Michael G. Mckinnon
Federal Judicial And Legislative Jurisdiction Over Entities Abroad: The Long-Arm Of U.S. Antitrust Law And Viable Solutions Beyond The Timberlane/Restatement Comity Approach, Michael G. Mckinnon
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Mind Control: Firms And The Production Of Ideas, Anthony J. Casey
Mind Control: Firms And The Production Of Ideas, Anthony J. Casey
Seattle University Law Review
The central questions for economic theories of the firm concern how the production of a good is organized (in the market or within a firm) and why that organization prevails. Derivative to these questions, legal scholars ask how the law affects and is affected by any particular organizational structure. Emerging literature looks at these questions in connection with the law of intellectual property. The prevailing theories in that literature focus primarily, though not exclusively, on patent law and generally adopt a property-rights theory of the firm. Those theories, focusing on residual control and hold-up problems, have shown that as patent …
Theories Of The Firm And Judicial Uncertainty, Andrew S. Gold
Theories Of The Firm And Judicial Uncertainty, Andrew S. Gold
Seattle University Law Review
There is no necessary connection between academics’ theories of the firm and judicial theories of the firm. Economists and legal scholars may adopt one theory of the firm, and courts may adopt another. We might even predict this result. Judges are not economists, and as increasingly sophisticated theories of the firm emerge in the academic literature, judges are not well-positioned to keep pace with the evolving accounts. Indeed, judges may reasonably choose to adopt no theory at all. Given these premises, this Essay explores the relationship between academically developed theories of the firm and corporate legal doctrine. Legal scholars who …
Coase, Knight, And The Nexus-Of-Contracts Theory Of The Firm: A Reflection On Reification, Reality, And The Corporation As Entrepreneur Surrogate, Charles R.T. O'Kelley
Coase, Knight, And The Nexus-Of-Contracts Theory Of The Firm: A Reflection On Reification, Reality, And The Corporation As Entrepreneur Surrogate, Charles R.T. O'Kelley
Seattle University Law Review
Working within the nexus-of-contracts model, scholars have struggled to develop a rhetorical paradigm that accurately predicts or describes corporation law. This difficulty flows from twin flaws in the currently dominant model—the equation of the corporation and the firm and the exclusion of the entrepreneur. Coase and his progenitor, Frank Knight, saw the firm as having an “inside” and an “outside” and a distinct central actor—the entrepreneur. Contrary to the allocation of resources by the unconscious processes of the market fundamental to the perfect competition model favored by free-market, nexus-of-contracts theorists, Knight and Coase looked inside the firm and identified the …
Salomon Redux: The Moralities Of Business, Allan C. Hutchinson, Ian Langlois
Salomon Redux: The Moralities Of Business, Allan C. Hutchinson, Ian Langlois
Seattle University Law Review
In this Essay, we revisit the Salomon case and its related litigation not only from a legal standpoint but also from a broader moral perspective. 4 In the second Part, we offer a detailed context for and account of the Salomon litigation. The third Part focuses on the historical roots of the corporation and the judicial arguments in Salomon. In the fourth Part, we explore the moral and legal consequences of the Salomon decision. Throughout the Essay, our ambition will be not only to give the Salomon case a more contextual and richer spin but also to tackle the relationship …
Law And Legal Theory In The History Of Corporate Responsibility: Corporate Personhood, Lyman Johnson
Law And Legal Theory In The History Of Corporate Responsibility: Corporate Personhood, Lyman Johnson
Seattle University Law Review
This Article, the first of a multipart project, addresses the nature of corporate personhood, one area where law has played a central role in the history of corporate responsibility in the United States.1 The treatment will be illustrative, not exhaustive. Consistent with the theme of the larger project, the Article serves to make the simple but important point that a full historical understanding of corporate responsibility requires an appreciation of the law’s significant, if ultimately limited, contribution to the longstanding American quest for more responsible corporate conduct. On one hand, the spheres of law and corporate responsibility, although clearly complementary, …
Nevada And The Market For Corporate Law, Bruce H. Kobayashi, Larry E. Ribstein
Nevada And The Market For Corporate Law, Bruce H. Kobayashi, Larry E. Ribstein
Seattle University Law Review
Berle and Means’s view that managers rather than shareholders control our largest corporations finds important expression in William Cary’s famous article arguing that managers have led shareholders on a “race to the bottom” whose finish line is Delaware. These views, in turn, support supplanting state corporation law with federal regulation of corporate governance. Concerns about a race to the bottom lately focus on Nevada, which seeks to be Delaware’s first real competitor for out-of-state firms in the national incorporation market. Evidence suggests that Nevada’s strategy is to raise tax revenues by offering a significantly laxer corporate law than Delaware. We …
Hired To Invent Vs. Work Made For Hire: Resolving The Inconsistency Among Rights Of Corporate Personhood, Authorship, And Inventorship, Sean M. O'Connor
Hired To Invent Vs. Work Made For Hire: Resolving The Inconsistency Among Rights Of Corporate Personhood, Authorship, And Inventorship, Sean M. O'Connor
Seattle University Law Review
Corporations have long held core aspects of legal personhood, such as rights to own and divest property and to sue and be sued. U.S. copyright law allows corporations to be authors while U.S. patent law does not allow them to be inventors. To be sure, both copyright law and patent law allow corporations to own copyrights and patents as assignees. But only copyright law, through its work-made-for-hire doctrine, provides for the nonnatural person of the corporation to “be” the author in an almost metaphysical sense. Under patent law, the natural-person inventors must always be listed in the patent documents, even …
A Shallow Harbor And A Cold Horizon: The Deceptive Promise Of Modern Agency Law For The Theory Of The Firm, David A. Westbrook
A Shallow Harbor And A Cold Horizon: The Deceptive Promise Of Modern Agency Law For The Theory Of The Firm, David A. Westbrook
Seattle University Law Review
Modern agency law—the consensual agreement of one person to work for and under the control of another—has been widely used to provide a general framework for understanding a great deal of business law. Agency law concepts can be used to frame pedagogical, scholarly, institutional, and even political discourses. In so doing, modern agency law addresses concerns about the institution of the corporation, generally by reference to contract: institutions are created out of essentially consensual, and hence justifiable, relationships among autonomous individuals. So modern agency law is more than a “theory” of the firm in the narrow sense of theory; modern …
The Future Of Socialism, Robert Paul Wolff
The Future Of Socialism, Robert Paul Wolff
Seattle University Law Review
An unpromising title, this, in the seventh year of the third millennium of the Common Era; rather like “Recent Developments in Ptolemaic Astronomy” or “Betamax—a Technology Whose Time Has Come.” My grandfather’s dream, the faith of my younger days, has turned to ashes. And yet, I remain persuaded that Karl Marx has something important to teach us about the world in which we live today. In what follows, I propose to take as my text a famous statement from Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy1—a sort of preliminary sketch of Das Kapital2—and see what it can tell …
Strengthening Investment In Public Corporations Through The Uncorporation, Kelli A. Alces
Strengthening Investment In Public Corporations Through The Uncorporation, Kelli A. Alces
Seattle University Law Review
We cannot completely overcome the difficulties caused by the separation of ownership and control. In The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner Means focused our attention on what was then a relatively new phenomenon: widely dispersed public shareholding.1 They marveled at how, for the first time in the history of the American economy, the owners of assets had so little to do with the management of those assets, and managers had so much power over so much health that did not belong to them.2 Berle and Means described what we now call the Berle−Means corporation, the …
The Post-Revolutionary Period In Corporate Law: Returning To The Theory Of The Firm, Matthew T. Bodie
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 …