From toxic torts to poison pills, no corporate undertaking is unaffected by the workings of one of corporate law's bedrock principles: limited liability. But in the past forty years, critics of the doctrine's application to corporate torts have argued forcefully that limited liability creates...

Delaware precedent, primarily Trados and ODN, holds that corporate boards of directors owe fiduciary duties to holders of corporation common stock and not to holders of preferred stock. This precedent, however, fails to address a broad range of complex but commonly occurring potential conflicts...

This paper focuses on the issue of whether shareholder litigations brought in the U.S. - namely, derivative suits and securities class actions - and their equivalent in the Italian law system, achieve their principal regulatory goal of deterring corporate directors and officers from engaging in...

We address one of the cardinal puzzles of European corporate law: the lack of derivate share-holder suits. We explain this phenomenon on the basis of percentage limits which require share-holders to hold a minimum amount of shares in order to bring a lawsuit. We show that, under this legal...

In the wake of the legality crisis that has affected a number of prominent companies in the last decade, studies have reinforced the growing conviction that the board of directors, as legally constituted in leading jurisdictions, is not able to balance the power of controlling shareholders and...

In this Article, we propose legal reforms to empower shareholders in public corporations. Most shareholders participate in corporate governance in three ways: they vote, they sell, and they sue. We would expand the menu for shareholders in public corporations by enabling them to contract using...

In 2000 Delaware enacted a statute enabling corporations to host meetings solely by electronic means of communication rather than in a physical location. Since that time, several states have followed Delaware's lead, and the American Bar Association has proposed changing the Model Business...

Two Blue Ribbon business advisory panels have recently proposed arbitration to remedy the problems endemic to shareholder class action litigation. Critics have long assailed shareholder litigation as harmful to firms without conferring a corresponding benefit upon shareholders or the public....

This essay critiques the "shareholder protection" rationale for banning political speech by corporations, a rationale that applies regardless whether the speech occurs in connection with a political campaign. Proponents of this rationale contend that corporate expenditures on such speech...

Proxy advisors advise institutional investors on how to vote as shareholder in the companies of which shares are held in their investment portfolio. Proxy advisors have a great deal of influence. Their voting recommendations have an impact on the decisions of companies. This paper focuses on the...