Business Organizations Law Commons^™

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

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

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 …

Berle And Social Businesses: A Consideration, Celia R. Taylor

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means’s The Modern Corporation and Private Property has been thoroughly mined by scholars and used to support numerous theses, yet it still provides a rich source for consideration. Corporate legal theory has not yet determined how best to treat the issue of separation of ownership and control or fully resolved “who should receive the profits of industry.” Berle’s belief that corporate powers should be exercised in trust for shareholders has had limited traction, but his ideas continue to influence debate. This Article takes Berle’s statement that “when a convincing system of community obligations is worked out …

Summary Of In Re Amerco Derivative Litigation, 127 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 17, Jennifer Delcarmen

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

An appeal from an order to dismiss a shareholder derivative claim.

Summary Of American Ethanol V. Cordillera Fund, 127 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 13, Michael Roche

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court reviews an appeal from a district court decision in a corporation action.

Public(Ly Oriented) Companies: B Corporations And The Delaware Stakeholder Provision Dilemma, Steven J. Haymore

Vanderbilt Law Review

During his 2007 commencement address at Harvard University, Bill Gates called on the graduates to invent "a more creative capitalism" where "we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities." A number of entrepreneurs, including those that started online bookstore Better World Books ("BWB"), are doing their best to create a more creative capitalism. BWB sells approximately 10,000 books a day and brought in $30 million in revenue in 2010. BWB sells its products to return a profit …

Why Not A Ceo Term Limit?, Charles K. Whitehead

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In this Essay, I ask: Why not require a mandatory CEO term limit? My purpose is not to propose a term limit, but rather to ask why CEO term limits are out-of-bounds – not addressed within the corporate governance scholarship – when they have long been advocated for directors and, more recently, public company auditors.

The traditional answer has been that CEOs are agents of the corporation, subject to control by the board, which holds primary responsibility for the firm’s business and affairs. Senior officers are largely shielded from outside interference, permitting them to execute consistent, long-term business strategies under …

Outsourcing, Modularity, And The Theory Of The Firm Margaret M. Blair, Erin O’Hara O’Connor, And Gregg Kirchhoefer, Margaret M. Blair, Erin R O’Hara O’Conno, Gregg Kirchhoefer

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Separation Of Bank And State: Consolidating Bailed-Out Companies Into The U.S. Debt Ceiling And Government Financial Statements, J. W. Verret

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

To Incorporate Or Not To Incorporate - That Is The Question: How State V. Custard Clarified Corporate Governance In North Carolina, Lauren J. Allen

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

Interstate Comparison - Use Of Contribution Margin In Determination Of Price Fixing, Tsui Tat Chee

Pace International Law Review Online Companion

For over a century, anti-trust law has been used to maintain an open and fair market economy by preventing monopolies.  However, anti-trust law has never precisely defined the term “monopoly”, which makes evaluating the interactions between the prohibition of monopoly and encouraging competition increasingly challenging.

In 2006, the Hong Kong Government appointed Arculli & Associates Solicitor Firm to study issues relating to competition in the auto-fuel retail market in Hong Kong. A test based on contribution margins was recommended, leading to the conclusion that price fixing is not a crime in the industry.

This article examines the problems related …

Citizens United And Forced Speech: Why Protecting The Dissenting Shareholder Necessitates Disclosure Of Corporate Political Expenditures After Citizens United V. Fec, Sabina Bunt Thaler

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Holman V. Commissioner: A Death Knell For The Tax Value Of Transfer Restrictions In Family Limited Partnerships?, Brent B. Nicholson

William & Mary Business Law Review

This Article examines a recent United States court of appeals case concerning section 2703, Holman v. Commissioner,7 and some earlier cases, including a few under the 1958 regulation, that are relevant to Holman. The purpose of this Article is to explain the current state of the law with respect to buy-sell type agreements and their influence on setting the transfer tax value. The Article begins with a discussion of the relevant Code and Regulations, focusing on section 2703 and its legislative history. The Article then follows with a look at some of the relevant case law and an in-depth look …

The Uncorporation And The Unraveling Of 'Nexus Of Contracts' Theory, Grant M. Hayden, Matthew T. Bodie

Michigan Law Review

A corporation is not a contract. It is a state-created entity. It has legal personhood with the right to form contracts, suffer liability for torts, and (as the Supreme Court recently decided) make campaign contributions. However, many corporate law scholars have remained wedded to the conception-metaphor, model, paradigm, what have you-of the corporation as a contract or "nexus" of contracts. The nexus of contracts theory is meant to point up the voluntary, market-oriented nature of the firm and to dismiss the notion that the corporation owes anything to the state. It is also used as a justification for preserving the …

Naming, Identity, And Trademark Law, Laura A. Heymann

Faculty Publications

As the process of creation in the age of digital media becomes more fluid, one pervasive theme has been the desire for attribution: from the creator’s perspective, to receive credit for what one does (and to have credit not falsely attributed) and from the audience’s perspective, to understand the source of material with which one engages. But our norms of attribution reflect some inconsistencies in defining the relationship among name, identity, and authenticity. A blog post by a writer identified only by a pseudonym may prove to be very influential in the court of public opinion, while the use of …

Derivatives And The Legal Origin Of The 2008 Credit Crisis, Lynn A. Stout

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Experts still debate what caused the credit crisis of 2008. This Article argues that dubious honor belongs, first and foremost, to a little-known statute called the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA). Put simply, the credit crisis was not primarily due to changes in the markets; it was due to changes in the law. In particular, the crisis was the direct and foreseeable (and in fact foreseen by the author and others) consequence of the CFMA’s sudden and wholesale removal of centuries-old legal constraints on speculative trading in over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives.

Derivative contracts are probabilistic bets on future events. …

At The Intersection Of Corporate Governance And Environmental Sustainability, Jayne W. Barnard

William & Mary Business Law Review

Most boards of public companies have learned to live comfortably with audit committees, nominating committees, and compensation committees. An increasing number of companies are now also creating risk-management committees. This Essay explores the early stages of development of yet another board-level committee: the sustainability committee. The Essay posits several advantages to having a board-level sustainability committee and identifies possible sources of pressure for the creation of more such committees. It also suggests some of the disadvantages of sustainability committees and cautions against cosmetic governance reform. By examining what we know today (and can imagine tomorrow) about sustainability committees, this Essay …

Contracts As Organizations, D. Gordon Smith, Brayden G. King

Faculty Scholarship

Empirical studies of contracts have become more common over the past decade, but the range of questions addressed by these studies is narrow, inspired primarily by economic theories that focus on the role of contracts in mitigating ex post opportunism. We contend that these economic theories do not adequately explain many commonly observed features of contracts, and we offer four organizational theories to supplement-and in some instances, perhaps, challenge-the dominant economic accounts. The purpose of this Article is threefold: first, to describe how theoretical perspectives on contracting have motivated empirical work on contracts; second, to highlight the dominant role of …

Economics, Politics, And The International Principles For Sound Compensation Practices: An Analysis Of Executive Pay At European Banks, Guido Ferrarini, Maria C. Ungureanu

Vanderbilt Law Review

In this Article, we submit that the compensation structures at banks before the financial crisis were not necessarily flawed and that recent reforms in this area largely reflect already existing best practices. In Part I we review recent empirical studies on corporate governance and executive pay at banks and suggest that there is no strong support for regulating bankers' compensation structures. We also argue that detailed regulation of incentives would subtract essential decisionmaking powers from boards of directors and make compensation structures too rigid.

In Part II we note that political support for regulating bankers' pay has been strong and …