Business Organizations Law Commons^™

Turbulent Times At Treasury: Applying The Appointments Clause To Irs Appeals Officers, Christopher Dykzeul

UC Law Business Journal

No abstract provided.

The (Un)Predictable Impact Of Technology On Corporate Governance, Chiara Picciau

UC Law Business Journal

This article offers a novel account of the likely impact of new technologies—such as big data, algorithms, artificial intelligence, the blockchain, and smart contracts—on corporate governance. It shows that, contrary to common predictions, one of the most significant and immediate effects of these technologies on corporations concerns the distribution of competences and responsibilities among corporate bodies. The claim is supported by identifying five primary determinants of the current balance of powers in corporate organizations: (i) the speed and frequency of the decisions; (ii) the information necessary to decide and who has access to it; (iii) the costs of assigning decision-making …

Masthead

UC Law Business Journal

No abstract provided.

Section 10(B) And The Fiduciary Conundrum, Thomas M. Madden

UC Law Business Journal

No abstract provided.

The Hiring Entity’S Usual Course Of Business, Syed M. Q. Ali Khan

UC Law Business Journal

The ABC test has increasingly become a tool to differentiate employees from independent contractors. Companies and counsel throughout the nation have grappled with Part B of this test, which requires a determination of the hiring entity’s “usual course of business.” Adjudicators have provided little guidance on how to conduct this analysis and are admittedly frustrated with this “elusive concept.” Yet a thorough treatment of the analytical framework and guiding principles of Part B of the ABC Test has not been put forth.

This article fills this void in scholarship. By tracing the relevant concepts to the common law control test, …

Adverse Domination, Statutes Of Limitations And The In Pari Delicto Defense - Application In Cases Involving Claims Of Accounting Malpractice And Corporate Fraud, Laurence A. Steckman Esq., Adam J. Rader Esq.

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Workplace Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Programs: Inclusive Environments And Diversity Promotion Programs, Zachary Mccoy

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

No More Old Boys’ Club: Institutional Investors’ Fiduciary Duty To Advance Board Gender Diversity, Anat Alon-Beck, Michal Agmon-Gonnen, Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

As the benefits of gender equality for governance become more apparent, boardroom diversity initiatives abound. At the same time, institutional investors play an increasingly central role in the corporate world. This Article takes a novel approach to achieve this necessary change. Institutional investors already oversee firm leadership quite closely. This Article suggests that institutional investors hold a fiduciary duty to ensure there is gender diversity in leadership. As objections to state mandates persist, institutional investors can bring the benefits of private ordering to play a central role in ensuring equality.

Institutional investors play a dominant role over firms as principal …

Power And Pay In The C-Suite, Afra Afsharipour, Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The debate over executive pay has gripped corporate law scholars, regulators, and the national public for decades. A C-Suite position provides uniquely lucrative financial benefits to executives, especially to Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). Over the past few decades, CEO pay has risen spectacularly, as has debate regarding why this has occurred and whether policy should or can correct it. The reasons why CEO pay has increased exponentially in the last 30 years are complex, and the solutions for reigning in executive compensation have been incomplete at best.

Yet one glaring fact about the C-Suite eludes much of the corporate …

Mergers, Macs, And Covid-19, Brian Jm Quinn

University of Richmond Law Review

The conventional wisdom is that MAE/MACs in merger agreements provide an opportunity for buyers to renegotiate merger agreements in the event of intervening adverse events. However, the experience following the COVID-19 outbreak suggests that the conventional wisdom is incorrect or at least overstated. In fact, MAE/MACs shift the risk of exogenous adverse events (like COVID-19) to buyers while leaving only the risks of adverse endogenous and semi-endogenous events with the seller. The consequence of this risk-shifting is to strictly limit the circumstances under which a buyer can credibly lean on a MAE/MAC to threaten to terminate a merger agreement and …

Religious Roots Of Corporate Organization, Amanda Porterfield

Seattle University Law Review

Religion and corporate organization have developed side-by-side in Western culture, from antiquity to the present day. This Essay begins with the realignment of religion and secularity in seventeenth-century America, then looks to the religious antecedents of corporate organization in ancient Rome and medieval Europe, and then looks forward to the modern history of corporate organization. This Essay describes the long history behind the entanglement of business and religion in the United States today. It also shows how an understanding of both religion and business can be expanded by looking at the economic aspects of religion and the religious aspects of …

Investors As International Law Intermediaries: Using Shareholder Proposals To Enforce Human Rights, Kishanthi Parella

Seattle University Law Review

One of the biggest challenges with international law remains its enforcement. This challenge grows when it comes to enforcing international law norms against corporations and other business organizations. The United Nations Guiding Principles recognizes the “corporate responsibility to respect human rights,” which includes human rights due diligence practices that are adequate for “assessing actual and potential human rights impacts, integrating and acting upon the findings, tracking responses, and communicating how impacts are addressed.” Unfortunately, many corporations around the world are failing to implement adequate human rights due diligence practices in their supply chains. This inattention leads to significant harms for …

The Rise Of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: Opportunities And Challenges, Aaron J. Wright

Articles

The article explores the rise of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), highlighting their potential to transform traditional organizational structures through blockchain technology and smart contracts. DAOs offer operational efficiencies, such as decentralized governance and transparent decision-making, but face significant legal challenges, including lack of recognition, liability concerns, and regulatory uncertainties. The article argues that U.S. business law, with its emphasis on private ordering, could accommodate DAOs, but legal adaptations are necessary to address their unique characteristics and ensure widespread adoption.

From Property Rights To Liberty Rights: We The Corporations, A Review Essay, Laura Phillips-Sawyer

Scholarly Works

A long-standing, and deeply controversial, question in constitutional law is whether or not the Constitution's protections for “persons” and “people” extend to corporations. Law professor Adam Winkler's We the Corporations chronicles the most important legal battles launched by corporations to “win their constitutional rights,” by which he means both civil rights against discriminatory state action and civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution (p. xvii). Today, we think of the former as the right to be free from unequal treatment, often protected by statutory laws, and the latter as liberties that affect the ability to live …

Recalibrating Directors’ Liabilities Amidst Technological Flux, Pey Woan Lee, Susanna Leong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In this chapter, we consider how to balance corporate innovation and personal liability in the specific context of directors’ exposure to personal liability for corporate copyright infringements. Directors may incur personal liability in the statutory context if they have ‘authorised’ the company’s infringement, or at common law if they acted as the company’s joint tortfeasor. Due to the conflicting policy goals of encouraging innovation whilst preserving personal accountability, we observe that this regime is unsatisfactory. Delving into the modern history of copyright law, we seek to demonstrate that directors of technological companies operate in an environment of high legal uncertainty …

Fiduciary Judgment Rules, Julian Velasco

Journal Articles

Because of the strong moral rhetoric and robust equitable remedies available in fiduciary law, it is not surprising to find lawyers and legal scholars seeking to expand the reach of fiduciary law principles into new relationships and new areas of law. However, expansion often does not work very well because of the demanding and pervasive nature of fiduciary duties. Thus, jurists often turn to the business judgment rule and its policy of underenforcement of fiduciary duties as a way to fit fiduciary law principles into other areas of law. The problem with this approach is that it is based on …

Leveraging Corporate Law: A Broader Account Of Delaware’S Competition, Christopher M. Bruner

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Times They Are A-Changin': When Tech Employees Revolt!, Anat Alon-Beck

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Not Without Consent: Protecting Consent Rights Against Deliberate Breach, Karen A. Chesley

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why We Need Better Corporate Governance Data, Jens Frankenreiter, Cathy Hwang, Yaron Nili, Eric L. Talley

Scholarship@WashULaw

Three decades of finance, economics, and legal studies in corporate governance have been built substantially on data sets with nearly unknown provenance. A new paper sets to correct this fatal flaw of contemporary corporate governance research by debuting a brand new resource—the Cleaning Corporate Governance database.