Legal History Commons^™

The Gratuities Debate And Campaign Reform – How Strong Is The Link?, George D. Brown

George D. Brown

The federal gratuities statute, 18 USC § 201(c), continues to be a source of confusion and contention. The confusion stems largely from problems of draftsmanship within the statute, as well as uncertainty concerning the relationship of the gratuities offense to bribery. Both offenses are contained in the same statute; the former is often seen as a lesser-included offense variety of the latter. The controversy stems from broader concerns about whether the receipt of gratuities by public officials, even from those they regulate, should be a crime. The argument that such conduct should not be criminalized can be traced to, and …

The Difference Between The Occupiers And The Tea Party? The Meaning Of Freedom, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

The Place Of Workers In Corporate Law, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

This article critiques the low place of workers within corporate law doctrine. Corporate law, as it is traditionally taught, is primarily about shareholders, boards of directors, and managers, and the relationships among them. This is despite the fact that workers provide an essential input to a corporation's productive activities, and that the success of the business enterprise quite often turns on the success of the relationship between the corporation and those who are employed by it. Black letter corporate law requires directors to place the interests of shareholders above the interests of all other "stakeholders," including workers. This article analyzes …

Emerging Models For Alternatives To Marriage, Sanford N. Katz

Sanford N. Katz

Perhaps one of the most important changes in family law in the past thirty years has been the inclusion of certain kinds of friendships in the range of relationships from which rights and responsibilities can flow. Domestic partnership laws, a phenomenon of the 1990s, may be seen as a natural development from the judicial recognition of contract cohabitation and the legislative and judicial response to same-sex couples who, unable to meet statutory requirements for marriage, have sought official recognition of their relationships. This essay discusses an aspect of certain kinds of domestic partnership laws-their formal requirements and the extent to …

Moderator, Secularism, Islam, And Democracy, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

The Herman Cain Blame Game, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

The Misuse Of Tax Incentives To Align Management-Shareholder Interests, James R. Repetti

James R. Repetti

The U.S. tax system contains many provisions which are intended to align management of large publicly traded companies more closely to stockholders. This article shows that many of the tax provisions that have been adopted are of questionable effectiveness because they fail to address the complexities of stockholder-management relations in attempting to motivate management to act in the best interests of stockholders. The article proposes that rather than Congress attempting to identify the best way that it can use the tax system to motivate management, Congress should eliminate tax provisions which subsidize management's inefficiencies in order to encourage stockholders, themselves, …

The Three Economies: An Essay In Honor Of Joseph Sax, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

How does one evaluate the important public values and impacts of things that do not have a market price and then integrate them into the fabric of our system of social governance? That question lies within most or all of Joseph Sax's work over the years. The first part of this article represents an attempt to distill some of Joseph Sax's intellectual dimensions, beyond those already chronicled in the comments of other contributors to this symposium, with some linked themes and observations drawn from Sax beyond his writings. The second part, instigated by several of Sax's articles, presents "The Three …

Interview With Professor Kent Greenfield About His Book “The Myth Of Choice: Personal Responsibility In A World Of Limits”, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

Professor Kent Greenfield’s newest release, The Myth of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits (Yale University Press), is a broad-reaching view of the dynamics of choice.

Greenfield’s book begins with his knowledge of law and then ranges widely, tapping areas as diverse as sociology, the study of brain activity, and religious freedoms. He draws on scholarly commentary, news reports, political research polls and his own life decisions to complete the picture of choice and its many dimensions. Examining choice and its influence on public policy and legal theory, The Myth of Choice serves as a catalyst to challenge …

When Kids Are Left In Cars: Blame The Brain, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

Constitution Day, Happy Illegal Holiday!, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

Law As Economy: Convention, Corporation, Currency, Ritu Birla

UC Irvine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal Mechanization Of Corporate Social Responsibility Through Alien Tort Statute Litigation: A Response To Professor Branson With Some Supplemental Thoughts, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Response argues that as ATS jurisprudence “matures” or becomes more sophisticated, the legitimate limits of the law regress. The further expansion within the corporate defendant pool – attempting to pin liability on parent, great grandparent corporations and up to the top – raises the stakes and complexity of ATS litigation. The corporate social responsibility discussion raises three principal issues about how a moral corporation lives its life: how a corporation chooses its self-interest versus the interests of others, when and how it should help others if control decisions may harm the shareholder owners, and how far the corporation must …

The Debt Ceiling Impasse: It's Madison's Fault, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

The Marginalist Revolution In Corporate Finance: 1880-1965, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries fundamental changes in economic thought revolutionized the theory of corporate finance, leading to changes in its legal regulation. The changes were massive, and this branch of financial analysis and law became virtually unrecognizable to those who had practiced it earlier. The source of this revision was the marginalist, or neoclassical, revolution in economic thought. The classical theory had seen corporate finance as an historical, relatively self-executing inquiry based on the classical theory of value and administered by common law courts. By contrast, neoclassical value theory was forward looking and as a result …

A Preface To Neoclassical Legal Thought, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Most legal historians speak of the period following classical legal thought as “progressive legal thought.” That term creates an unwarranted bias in characterization, however, creating the impression that conservatives clung to an obsolete “classical” ideology, when in fact they were in many ways just as revisionist as the progressives legal thinkers whom they critiqued. The Progressives and New Deal thinkers whom we identify with progressive legal thought were nearly all neoclassical, or marginalist, in their economics, but it is hardly true that all marginalists were progressives. For example, the lawyers and policy makers in the corporate finance battles of the …

Reforming Limited Liability Law, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

The "Sweat Lodge Guru" Guilty Verdict: Recognizing The Deadly Influence Of Authority, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

Panelist, Beyond The Quarterly Report: Managing Risk And Creating Long-Term Value Through Corporate Responsibility, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

Moderator, Globalization, Corporate Accountability, And The Courts, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

Moderated panel of scholars and practitioners on the corporate exposure to tort liability for involvement in human rights violations.

France And Belgium Have Banned The Burqa. Should America Follow Suit?, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

Obama, Libya, And Executive Power, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

12 Laws Tea Partiers Would Repeal If They Could, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

Moderator, The Sustainable Corporation, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

Co-organized (and moderated a panel during) an international conference on corporate law and sustainability, held at Wake Forest Law School.

The Walmart Class Action And The Culture Of Discrimination, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

Wake Up America! Daylight Savings Time Is A Socialist Plot!, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

What My Snowy Sidewalk Has To Say About The Individual Mandate, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

No abstract provided.

El Derecho De Sucesiones Se Debe Atemperar A Los Cambios De La Sociedad Del Siglo Xxi, Edward Ivan Cueva

Edward Ivan Cueva

No abstract provided.

Panelist, Corporate Political Speech And Dueling Conceptions Of The Corporation In Supreme Court Jurisprudence, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

As chair of the Section on Business Organizations for AALS, I organized and moderated the 2011 Program of AALS Section on Business Associations, January 7, 2011, San Francisco, CA. Program was entitled “Corporate Political Speech and Dueling Conceptions of the Corporation in Supreme Court Jurisprudence,” and was co-sponsored by the Section on Constitutional Law. This was the first time in memory that the Business Associations Section and the Constitutional Law Section had co-sponsored a program.

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …