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Articles 1 - 29 of 29
Full-Text Articles in Legal Theory
Team Production Revisited, William W. Bratton
Team Production Revisited, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article reconsiders Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout’s team production model of corporate law, offering a favorable evaluation. The model explains both the legal corporate entity and corporate governance institutions in microeconomic terms as the means to the end of encouraging investment, situating corporations within markets and subject to market constraints but simultaneously insisting that productive success requires that corporations remain independent of markets. The model also integrates the inherited framework of corporate law into an economically derived model of production, constructing a microeconomic description of large enterprises firmly rooted in corporate doctrine but neither focused on nor limited by …
Corporate Disobedience, Elizabeth Pollman
Corporate Disobedience, Elizabeth Pollman
All Faculty Scholarship
Corporate law has long taken a dim view of corporate lawbreaking. Corporations can be chartered only for lawful activity. Contemporary case law characterizes intentional violations of law as a breach of the fiduciary duties of good faith and loyalty. While recognizing that rule breaking raises significant social and moral concerns, this Article suggests that corporate law and academic debate have overlooked important aspects of corporate disobedience. This Article provides an overview of corporate disobedience and illuminates the role that it has played in entrepreneurship and legal change. Corporations violate laws for a variety of reasons, including as part of efforts …
Line Drawing In Corporate Rights Determinations, Elizabeth Pollman
Line Drawing In Corporate Rights Determinations, Elizabeth Pollman
All Faculty Scholarship
This essay was written for the 21st Annual Clifford Symposium: The Supreme Court, Business, and Civil Justice. The essay argues that existing lines drawn between corporations may be a useful starting place for analyzing the rights of corporations, but caution must be used because the lines drawn in other areas were done for various policy reasons in different contexts that may not map onto the corporate rights determination. Attention should be paid to the specific characteristics of corporations that are relevant to the right at stake and the basis for extending protection. The key contribution of this essay is to …
Constitutionalizing Corporate Law, Elizabeth Pollman
Constitutionalizing Corporate Law, Elizabeth Pollman
All Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court has recently decided some of the most important and controversial cases involving the federal rights of corporations in over two hundred years of jurisprudence. In rulings ranging from corporate political spending to religious liberty rights, the Court has dramatically expanded the zone in which corporations can act free from regulation. This Article argues these decisions represent a doctrinal shift, even from previous cases granting rights to corporations. The modern corporate rights doctrine has put unprecedented weight on state corporate law to act as a mechanism for resolving disputes among corporate participants regarding the expressive and religious activity …
The Derivative Nature Of Corporate Constitutional Rights, Margaret M. Blair, Elizabeth Pollman
The Derivative Nature Of Corporate Constitutional Rights, Margaret M. Blair, Elizabeth Pollman
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article engages the two hundred year history of corporate constitutional rights jurisprudence to show that the Supreme Court has long accorded rights to corporations based on the rationale that corporations represent associations of people from whom such rights are derived. The Article draws on the history of business corporations in America to argue that the Court’s characterization of corporations as associations made sense throughout most of the nineteenth century. By the late nineteenth century, however, when the Court was deciding several key cases involving corporate rights, this associational view was already becoming a poor fit for some corporations. The …
A Corporate Right To Privacy, Elizabeth Pollman
A Corporate Right To Privacy, Elizabeth Pollman
All Faculty Scholarship
The debate over the scope of constitutional protections for corporations has exploded with commentary on recent or pending Supreme Court cases, but scholars have left unexplored some of the hardest questions for the future, and the ones that offer the greatest potential for better understanding the nature of corporate rights. This Article analyzes one of those questions — whether corporations have, or should have, a constitutional right to privacy. First, the Article examines the contours of the question in Supreme Court jurisprudence and provides the first scholarly treatment of the growing body of conflicting law in the lower courts on …
Corporate Social Responsibility In A Remedy-Seeking Society: A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan
Corporate Social Responsibility In A Remedy-Seeking Society: A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan
Donald J. Kochan
Written for the Chapman Law Review Symposium on “What Can Law & Economics Teach Us About the Corporate Social Responsibility Debate?,” this Article applies the lessons of public choice theory to examine corporate social responsibility. The Article adopts a broad definition of corporate social responsibility activism to include both (1) those efforts that seek to convince corporations to voluntarily take into account corporate social responsibility in their own decision-making, and (2) the efforts to alter the legal landscape and expand legal obligations of corporations beyond traditional notions of harm and duty so as to force corporations to invest in interests …
Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz
Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
Why are most capitalist enterprises of any size organized as authoritarian bureaucracies rather than incorporating genuine employee participation that would give the workers real authority? Even firms with employee participation programs leave virtually all decision-making power in the hands of management. The standard answer is that hierarchy is more economically efficient than any sort of genuine participation, so that participatory firms would be less productive and lose out to more traditional competitors. This answer is indefensible. After surveying the history, legal status, and varieties of employee participation, I examine and reject as question-begging the argument that the rarity of genuine …
Reassessing Corporate Personhood In The Wake Of Occupy Wall Street, Nick J. Sciullo
Reassessing Corporate Personhood In The Wake Of Occupy Wall Street, Nick J. Sciullo
Nick J. Sciullo
This article is about corporate personhood, discussed on the backdrop of class consciousness and criticisms of capital generated, in large part, by the recent and continuing Occupy Movements. I am at first concerned with articulating the evolving jurisprudence of corporate personhood as developed in the Supreme Court of the United States. Combined with this doctrinal approach, I offer a Marxist criticism of corporate personhood jurisprudence that culminates in a discussion of the Occupy Movements' logic of resistance to corporate domination in the United States' law and policy. First, I discuss the role Marxist criticism has played in legal discourse and …
Legal Mechanization Of Corporate Social Responsibility Through Alien Tort Statute Litigation: A Response To Professor Branson With Some Supplemental Thoughts, Donald J. Kochan
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 …
Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz
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 …
Reconceiving Corporate Personhood, Elizabeth Pollman
Reconceiving Corporate Personhood, Elizabeth Pollman
All Faculty Scholarship
Why is a corporation a “person” for purposes of the Constitution? This old question has become new again with public outrage over Citizens United, the recent campaign finance case which expanded corporate constitutional speech rights. This Article traces the historical and jurisprudential developments of corporate personhood and concludes that the doctrine’s origins had the limited purview of protecting individuals’ property and contract interests. Over time, the Supreme Court expanded the doctrine without a coherent explanation or consistent approach. The Court has relied on the older cases that were decided in different contexts and on various flawed conceptions of the corporation. …
Black Tuesday And Graying The Legitimacy Line For Governmental Intervention: When Tomorrow Is Just A Future Yesterday, Donald J. Kochan
Black Tuesday And Graying The Legitimacy Line For Governmental Intervention: When Tomorrow Is Just A Future Yesterday, Donald J. Kochan
Donald J. Kochan
Black Tuesday in October 1929 marked a major crisis in American history. As we face current economic woes, it is appropriate to recall not only the event but also reflect on how it altered the legal landscape and the change it precipitated in the acceptance of governmental intervention into the marketplace. Perceived or real crises can cause us to dance between free markets and regulatory power. Much like the events of 1929, current financial concerns have led to new, unprecedented governmental intervention into the private sector. This Article seeks caution, on the basis of history, arguing that fear and crisis …
Citizens Not United: The Lack Of Stockholder Voluntariness In Corporatepolitical Speech, Elizabeth Pollman
Citizens Not United: The Lack Of Stockholder Voluntariness In Corporatepolitical Speech, Elizabeth Pollman
All Faculty Scholarship
As the Supreme Court reconsiders prior decisions upholding limits on corporate electioneering from general funds, this Essay suggests that the longstanding concern about the lack of stockholder assent to corporate political speech is more compelling than ever. Patterns of U.S. stockholding have significantly changed in the past several decades so as to heighten the concern and caution against a broad overruling of precedents. Stockholders' ability to sell their securities or pursue a derivative action, and other means of "corporate democracy," do not alleviate the concern. A broad decision in favor of Citizens United could leave even stockholders who carefully screen …
Invisible Ink In The Eighth Arrondissement, Karl T. Muth
Invisible Ink In The Eighth Arrondissement, Karl T. Muth
Karl T Muth
IMPORTANT: This document may prompt you for a username and password. If this occurs, please simply click "cancel" and the document will load. Thank you. This Article deals with the history of the secret contract that governs the distribution of economic rents enjoyed by Formula One. It further explores the environment in which this secret contract evolved and briefly discusses applications for secret contracts in other scenarios and industries.
Shareholder Primacy's Corporatist Origins: Adolf Berle And The Modern Corporation, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
Shareholder Primacy's Corporatist Origins: Adolf Berle And The Modern Corporation, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Private Equity's Three Lessons For Agency Theory, William W. Bratton
Private Equity's Three Lessons For Agency Theory, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Private Standards, Public Governance: A New Look At The Financial Accounting Standards Board, William W. Bratton
Private Standards, Public Governance: A New Look At The Financial Accounting Standards Board, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
The Financial Accounting Standards Board (the “FASB”) presents a puzzle: How has this private standard setter managed simultaneously (1) to remain independent, (2) to achieve institutional stability and legitimacy, and (3) to operate in a politicized context in the teeth of op-position from its own constituents? This Article looks to governance design to account for this institutional success. The FASB’s founders made a strategic choice to create a regulatory agency that sought independence rather than political responsiveness. The FASB also set out a coherent theory of accounting, the “Conceptual Framework,” to contain and direct its decisions. The Conceptual Framework contributed …
The Equilibrium Content Of Corporate Federalism, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery
The Equilibrium Content Of Corporate Federalism, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Welfare, Dialectic, And Mediation In Corporate Law, William W. Bratton
Welfare, Dialectic, And Mediation In Corporate Law, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The New Dividend Puzzle, William W. Bratton
The New Dividend Puzzle, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Rules, Principles, And The Accounting Crisis In The United States, William W. Bratton
Rules, Principles, And The Accounting Crisis In The United States, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Securities Exchange Commission move too quickly ·when they prod the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the standard setter for US GAAP, to move immediately to a principles-based system. Priorities respecting reform of corporate reporting in the US need to be ordered more carefully. Incentive problems impairing audit performance should be solved first through institutional reform insulating the audit from the negative impact of rent-seeking and solving adverse selection problems otherwise affecting audit practice. So long as auditor independence and management incentives respecting accounting treatments remain suspect. the US reporting system holds out no actor plausibly positioned …
Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley And Accounting: Rules Versus Principles Versus Rents, William W. Bratton
Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley And Accounting: Rules Versus Principles Versus Rents, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Berle And Means Reconsidered At The Century's Turn, William W. Bratton
Berle And Means Reconsidered At The Century's Turn, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
An Inquiry Into The Efficiency Of The Limited Liability Company: Of Theory Of The Firm And Regulatory Competition, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery
An Inquiry Into The Efficiency Of The Limited Liability Company: Of Theory Of The Firm And Regulatory Competition, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Self-Regulation, Normative Choice, And The Structure Of Corporate Fiduciary Law, William W. Bratton
Self-Regulation, Normative Choice, And The Structure Of Corporate Fiduciary Law, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Confronting The Ethical Case Against The Ethical Case For Constituency Rights, William W. Bratton
Confronting The Ethical Case Against The Ethical Case For Constituency Rights, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The "Nexus Of Contracts" Corporation: A Critical Appraisal, William W. Bratton
The "Nexus Of Contracts" Corporation: A Critical Appraisal, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Rethinking The Rules Against Corporate Privacy Rights: Some Conceptual Quandries For The Common Law, Anita L. Allen
Rethinking The Rules Against Corporate Privacy Rights: Some Conceptual Quandries For The Common Law, Anita L. Allen
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.