When Google went public with a dual‐class capital structure in which shares owned by the founders confer greater voting rights than shares issued to public investors, its cofounders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, promised to provide investors with high‐quality information about the company. Using the words of Warren Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, another dual‐class firm, they promised

Scholars, antitrust agencies, and policy makers have historically paid little attention to anticompetitive practices in labor markets. This was largely due a misconception that antitrust law is meant to govern conventional markets in which goods and services trade, rather than govern labor markets. Antitrust law may also offer a poor remedy to redress employers who enter no‐poaching agreements or otherwise

Organizations like 350.org, Insure Our Future, and DivestInvest are leading campaigns to urge boycott and divestment from fossil fuels as a means to address climate change. Increasingly, they are finding success, from individual consumers to massive pension and sovereign wealth funds. However, as organized group boycotts, divest campaigns may be vulnerable to prosecution under antitrust law. This article

The Supreme Court's decision in Pacific Bell Telephone Co. v. linkLine Communications, Inc. removed an important tool from competition regulators’ arsenals. Not only did the Court express skepticism about the existence of a price squeeze cause of action, but it also applied the economically mismatched predatory pricing test to price squeeze cases. Unfortunately, the lack of clarity on linkLine's reach

This is a dynamic time for insolvency law. Many jurisdictions have made or are considering reforms to their insolvency regimes. The United Kingdom has proposed a new standalone restructuring mechanism that incorporates many attributes of Chapter 11, including a cross‐class cram down and the absolute priority rule. A distinctive feature of the UK proposal is the infusion of judicial discretion permitting

In 2014, New Jersey passed the Sports Wagering Act, permitting sports betting at state casino and racetrack venues, in direct conflict with the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. In 2017, South Dakota passed Senate Bill 106, requiring that certain e‐commerce retailers collect and remit sales tax, in violation of federal law. The two U.S. Supreme Court decisions arising from challenges

In this article we examine the rate at which patent applications are granted as a function of the inventor's race and gender. Empirical analysis of more than 3.9 million U.S. applications finds minority and women applicants are significantly less likely to secure a patent relative to the balance of inventors. Further analysis indicates that a portion of this bias is introduced during prosecution at

Because federal law does not expressly prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, LGBTQ Americans were thrilled to learn that a preliminary draft of the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) included a provision (the Provision) requiring each nation to enact LGBTQ‐inclusive nondiscrimination laws. That excitement promptly turned to despair, however

For most of its modern history, antitrust law distinguished between normal competition and monopolization by looking for merit, legitimate business justifications, or efficiencies in the challenged business conduct. These proxies were seen as appropriate because they served antitrust law's welfare objectives well. However, the universal adoption of these proxies has overshadowed significant shortcomings

It is well understood that the exchange of information between horizontal competitors can violate competition law provisions in both the European Union (EU) and the United States, namely, article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and section 1 of the Sherman Act. However, despite ostensible similarities between EU and U.S. antitrust law concerning interfirm information exchange

This article uses the context of daily fantasy sports (DFS) to analyze how companies use strategic categorization in regulatory arbitrage. Recent actions by two leaders in the DFS industry, DraftKings and FanDuel, provide an ideal context to study this issue. DraftKings and FanDuel categorized themselves differently to different audiences at different times in a manner that evaded categorization as

Behavioral scientists boast that their insights have increased savings in 401(k) plans. Evidence shows that careful use of default decision settings and nudges can prevent decisional errors and encourage behavior that aligns with public policy while retaining individual power of choice. Indeed, even the Swedish National Academy of Sciences highlighted the effect of his behavioral science work on retirement

In the Industrial Revolution, machines took on the burden of physical labor; in the Big Data Revolution, machines are taking on the tasks of making decisions. Algorithms are the rules and processes that enable machines to make those decisions. Machines will make many decisions that affect general well‐being. This article addresses a threat to the efficacy of those decisions: the intentional distortion

Historically, intellectual property (IP) owners could rely on injunctive remedies to prevent continued infringement. The Supreme Court's eBay v. MercExchange decision changed this, however. After eBay, patent courts no longer apply presumptions that push the deliberative scales in favor of injunctions (or “property rule” protection). Instead, patent injunctions require a careful four‐factor analysis

The Supreme Court's recent decisions interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) in the employment context generally prioritize arbitration over workers’ labor law rights. The majority in Epic Systems Corporation v. Lewis upheld mandatory individual employment arbitration agreements despite their conflict with the labor law right to act in concert. The same majority in Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela

Sustainability reporting can be seen as an attempt to bring improved environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices to mainstream business. However, this movement to mainstream is hampered by the disconnect between financial and ESG information. Both reporting streams use the concept of materiality to shape firms’ disclosure obligations, but the term carries different meanings for different

The regulation of controlling shareholder related‐party transactions is one of corporate law's animating concerns. A recent Chancery Court decision extends the double approval framework endorsed by the Delaware Supreme Court—independent director committees and a majority of the minority shareholders—to non‐freezeout transactions. This article explains why the Chancery Court's innovation does not decrease

Numerous statutes and common law doctrines conceive of a dividing line between work time and nonwork time and delineate the activities that must be compensated as work. While technological innovations and increasing desires for workplace flexibility have begun to erode this divide, it persists, in part, because of the ways in which the division protects employers and employees alike. Nonetheless, the

In the 2007–08 financial crisis, over‐the‐counter (OTC) derivatives triggered the collapse of colossal financial institutions. In response, global policy makers instituted clearinghouse mandates. As a result, all standardized OTC derivatives must now use clearinghouses, and global financial market stability now depends upon these institutions. Yet certain underlying legal and regulatory structures

Civil law is enforced primarily via private litigation. One characteristic of private enforcement is that litigation levels tend to cycle between periods of boom and bust. This article builds a theory for explaining this fluctuation, proposing that plaintiffs’ attorneys can be understood as economic migrants. Just as workers cross borders to find jobs, lawyers “move” across case types and jurisdictions

The U.S. tax law equates the tax rate on dividends and long‐term capital gains on stock owned by U.S. citizens and residents. However, the taxation of these two types of rewards in the hands of foreign portfolio investors remains dramatically different from each other, with the capital gain being fully exempt. Several reasons support this article's proposal to no longer exempt these gains. Extending

Esports is now a multibillion‐dollar industry that has quickly become one of the most discussed segments of the entertainment industry. There has been a rush to mention esports alongside other more traditional sports like baseball, basketball, football, and hockey, but the comparison may not be apt. Esports leagues are fundamentally different from traditional sports leagues because the competitive

The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became applicable in May 2018. Due to the GDPR's extraterritorial scope, which could result in massive fines for U.S. companies, comparative data privacy law is of great current interest. In June 2018, California passed its own Consumer Privacy Act, echoing some of the provisions of the GDPR. Despite the many articles comparing the two

As tensions between investors’ rights and sovereign power escalate, investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) has become a focal point of backlash and controversy. As a result, ISDS now embodies two opposing currents in international law: (1) the erosion of sovereignty that accompanied economic globalization, trade frameworks, and investment treaties following the Second World War and (2) more recently

Employment disputes are increasingly centered on the conflicting moral and religious values of corporations, their employees, and their customers. These conflicts are especially challenging when they involve the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) employees and customers contraposed against the religious beliefs of corporations and their owners. When religious

The Supreme Court instructs that the most important consideration in analyzing fair use is the effect on the market for the original. Employing music sales data, this article presents evidence of digital sampling's effect on the sales of sampled songs. Our results indicate that a reassessment of fair use in the area of music sampling is needed since sales of sampled songs increased after being repurposed

This article examines the potential for transparency programs to improve corporations’ human rights performance. The primary focus is on “general” transparency programs such as the inclusion of human rights issues in sustainability reports. Regulators increasingly rely on such programs, one of which is the EU Directive on the Disclosure of Non‐financial Information, which many commentators view as

Denials of relief for even clear violations of statutory protections have left some injured benefit plan participants and beneficiaries without compensation and failed to provide appropriate incentives for compliance. Many of the remedial failures can be traced to a 1993 U.S. Supreme Court case, which narrowly construed the relevant statute's provision for appropriate equitable relief. I argue that

Overt gender discrimination in the workplace is now less frequent since the passage of the Civil Rights Act; however, subconscious workplace gender biases persist. These subtle biases continue to contribute to gender inequality in the employment context, hindering women's ability to reach the top ranks of corporate leadership and their ability to achieve pay equity. To combat this inequity, in this

Since mid‐twentieth century, courts and state legislatures have recognized that legitimate petitioning and free speech activities should not be subject to civil litigation. Laws meant to regulate or proscribe one form of activity should not be abused to curb First Amendment activities. Over the past thirty years a number of states have enacted legislation to protect individuals and organizations active

Whistleblowers are severely disadvantaged when they apply for jobs. Many whistleblowers experience retaliation twofold—first, at their place of employment after they initially blow the whistle, and, second, on the job market for any subsequent employment. This negative trail follows whistleblowers, labeling them as disloyal, suspicious, and, ultimately, not ideal employees, and, thus, unable to find

In recent years, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have enforced the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) with increasing rigor. These zealous enforcement practices have been criticized for putting excessive pressure on companies to settle, often through nonprosecution or deferred prosecution agreements. The resulting proliferation of such settlements

In 2016 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) considered for the first time whether financial disclosure reform should address information on sustainability matters and other sources of nonfinancial risk. The resulting debate over these issues raised fundamental questions about how well the federal disclosure regime addresses emerging risks and about how well private ordering, through shareholder

People with psychiatric disabilities often need atypical accommodations to participate in today's workforce. Some of these accommodations, including structural and social changes in the workplace, can address biases against people with psychiatric disabilities, while others ameliorate deficits that may affect performance or interaction with others. Many courts have denied requests for such accommodations

Scholars have theorized that resource‐rich litigants known as the “haves” tend to succeed disproportionately in litigation when the adverse party is a “have‐not.” The traditional theory suggests that haves are able to use their wealth to secure better attorney representation and can use their frequent experience in litigation to tip the scales of justice in their favor, particularly when faced with

This study describes three types of digital wage theft, as depicted in 330 cases litigated in federal and state court. The first, known as “rounding,” occurs when employers set their timekeeping software to alter employee punch time in a preset increment (typically moving punches to the nearest quarter hour). The second, “automatic break deductions,” involves subtracting a preset increment of time

In 2015 the corporate world was jolted as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) commenced its first enforcement action against employer‐mandated confidentiality agreements to silence would‐be whistleblowers, imposing sanctions on KBR Inc. (KBR) for contractually restricting its employees from becoming whistleblowers. Lying dormant until this action, Dodd–Frank's Rule 21F‐17, which bars restrictions

In September 2015, the crowdfunding site Kickstarter announced that it would adopt a new corporate form, that of a benefit corporation. Kickstarter is far from alone in this decision; in fact, it joined a growing list of tech firms that are moving toward adopting a benefit corporation designation. The result of the legal movement is that corporate governance across the nation may be changing, impacting

Though several states have legalized marijuana use, the drug remains illegal under federal law. Not surprisingly, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) refuses to register trademarks related to marijuana because of the federal prohibition. What is surprising, though, is the willingness to grant trademarks for cannabidiol (CBD), a marijuana derivative that is likewise expressly illegal

Flexible work, the practice of giving employees some control over their working time, can transform the modern workplace. Once the province of scattered national legislation, the European Union is now considering the inclusion of flextime rights in the Working Time Directive (WTD), the leading EU legislation related to work time. In this article, we propose that the European Commission should adopt

Some legal scholars—skeptics—question the conventional wisdom that corporations failed to provide adequate information to prospective investors before the passage of the Securities Act of 1933 (Securities Act). These skeptics argue that the Securities Act’s disclosure requirements were largely unnecessary. For example, Paul G. Mahoney in his 2015 book, Wasting A Crisis: Why Securities Regulation Fails

Companies are nudging. That is, they are using the tools of behavioral science as pioneered by behavioral economists and promoted by policymakers to steer employees toward welfare-maximizing options. While companies began nudging to increase employee health, safety, and financial literacy, choice architecture is now being used to make employees more ethical. “Behavioral ethics nudging” is seen as the

This article investigates the ways in which employers are made to "feel" the costs generated by workers' occupational illnesses and injuries. In economic terms, many of those costs are externalized, i.e. experienced by parties other than the employer, whose safety decisions are therefore distorted. The law and the labor market set up a variety of mechanisms that may transmit costs back to the employer:

Financial accounting is the language of the business world and generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) comprise its terminology. The dictionary-like use of GAAP in business discourse conveys a conception of accounting standards as definitional rules, i.e., as rules that merely provide consensual definitions for financial discourse without affecting the content of the discourse. As such, GAAP

Although the law remains predominately focused on the written word, a growing body of scholarship and legal practice reflect a dramatic increase in the use of visualization in virtually every legal context. Three starting assumptions underpin our ideas of implementing visualization ideas and techniques into what we call “Legal Design” that may aid contract simplification:First, we examine the use of

When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was created in 1982, commentators initially were enthusiastic about the court and its unique status as a specialized court. Today, however, scholars are increasingly worried that the creation of this specialized court for patent appeals has resulted in excessive formalism, inaccurate patent law, and doctrinal rigidity. Commentators often base their

Those who lend money typically take steps to protect against or compensate themselves for the risk the borrower will default. These steps — such as charging higher rates of interest for riskier loans — can affect borrowers’ activities in salutary ways. Lenders thus “discipline” borrowers to rein in risk. This type of market discipline can be an important supplement to regulatory efforts to ensure that

This article discusses the provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership on amicus curiae participation.

Over the past decade, interest in socially responsible business has grown exponentially. The social business movement seeks to have firms focus on the interests of all corporate stakeholders, rather than solely the financial interests of shareholders. Coupled with the social business movement of the past decade has been the passage of social enterprise statutes by over thirty states. The social enterprise

Puerto Rico, as a quasi-sovereign U.S. territory, is confronting a debt crisis of unparalleled legal complexity. This article analyzes the collective action problems in sovereign debt finance in the context of Puerto Rico’s quasi-sovereign debt dilemma. We examine how sovereign debtors engage with their private creditors in the absence of a formal bankruptcy regime and show how various legal incentives

© 2016 The Author American Business Law Journal © 2016 Academy of Legal Studies in Business. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Gomtsian, S. (2016), Private Ordering of Exit in Limited Liability Companies: Theory and Evidence from Business Organization Contracts. Am Bus Law J, 53: 677–744., which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/ablj.12087. This article

The Silicon Valley Ellen Pao trial brought to the forefront once again the changing nature of discrimination in the workplace with its focus on a culture of bias and the prevalence of unconscious discriminatory behavior. This case is only the most recent high-profile example. There is an emerging consensus among scholars that the concept of “intent” in disparate treatment employment discrimination

“Know-your-rights” posters are ubiquitous in the American workplace, as employers are required by statute or regulation to display numerous notices about workers’ rights on the job. These posters were relatively uncontroversial until a recent set of lawsuits by employer groups attempted, on statutory and constitutional grounds, to block rules that would require notices about workers’ rights to form

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Affordable Care Act” or ACA), health information technology (HIT) adoption, and increasing implementation of electronic medical records, are all propelling health care into the world of big data. Big data, analytics, and predictive algoithms are poised to play a large part in the transformation of health-care delivery in the United States, determining

This article analyzes the role of corporate in-house counsel in compliance. The rise of corporate counsel — most prominently, the Chief Legal Officer — has been accompanied by the growing demands of regulatory compliance and the emergence of the compliance profession. We examine the significant and positive influence of corporate counsel over two distinct yet interrelated domains: corporate governance

Businesses are increasingly using collaboration to address concerns about sustainability, transparency, human rights, and labor conditions in global markets. Such collaborations include the development of certifications and standards, the sharing of information about factories and suppliers, and agreements to share facilities, like less than full delivery trucks. Yet at the same time, federal antitrust

The term “crowdsourcing” was coined in 2005 to describe how some companies replaced employees and suppliers with an undefined, generally large group of individuals via an open call on the Internet.1 Today, crowdsourcing is a well-established method of business production, with start-ups and established enterprises alike using this model to create and deliver value. These enterprises range from t-shirt