Cornell Law Review

The Inevitability and Desirability of the Corporate Discretion to Advance Stakeholder Interests

Einer Elhauge, Petrie Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

In The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance, Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita offer a vigorous defense of the view that corporate leaders should have a legal duty to maximize only shareholder value.11. Lucian A. Bebchuk & Roberto Tallarita, The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance, 106 CORNELL L. REV. 91 (2020). They define “corporate leaders” as…

Feb 2022

Article

Distributed Federalism: The Transformation of Younger

Anne Rachel Traum, Professor of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

For decades federal courts have remained mostly off limits to civil rights cases challenging the constitutionality of state criminal proceedings. Younger abstention, which requires federal courts to abstain from suits challenging the constitutionality of pending state prosecutions, has blocked plaintiffs from bringing meritorious civil rights cases and insulated local officials and federal courts from having…

Feb 2022

Shareholderism Versus Stakeholderism–A Misconceived Contradiction

Colin Mayer, Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

This Essay critiques an assessment by Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita of the relative merits of shareholder and stakeholder governance. In “The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance,” Bebchuk and Tallarita argue that stakeholder governance is either nothing more than enlightened shareholder value, or it imposes unmanageable trade-offs on directors of companies. But trade-offs are ubiquitous…

Feb 2022

Note

The Missing Civility in Civil Damages: A Proposed Guidelines Structure for Calculating Punitive Damages

Ashley Stamegna, J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School, 2022; B.S., University of Connecticut, Health Care Management, 2019

“[P]unitive damages are out of control”11. W. Kip Viscusi, The Social Costs of Punitive Damages Against Corporations in Environmental and Safety Torts, 87 GEO. L.J. 285, 333 (1998).—or so tort reformers say. The past two decades have witnessed heated debates over a range of tort reform proposals, from punitive damages caps to complete punitive damages…

Feb 2022

On the Promise of Stakeholder Governance: A Response to Bebchuk and Tallarita

William Savitt, Partner, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz

Aneil Kovvali, Harry A. Bigelow Teaching Fellow & Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago Law School

Professor Bebchuk and his coauthor Roberto Tallarita have launched a broadside against recent efforts of business leaders, scholars, and lawyers to promote a corporate governance model that permits directors to take into account interests other than stockholders—a governance regime that authorizes directors to manage their corporations having in mind the interests not of stockholders alone,…

Feb 2022

Note

Cookies and Wires: Can Facebook Lure Users Into Divulging Information Under the Wiretap Act’s Party Exception?

Richard T. Wang, B.A., Washington University in St. Louis, 2017; J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School, 2022

The advent of the Internet brought immeasurable benefits11. See Lisa Eadicicco, Obama Wants to Reclassify the Internet by Turning It Into a Utility, BUSINESS INSIDER (Nov. 10, 2014, 9:36 AM), https:// www.businessinsider.com/president-obama-thinks-the-internet-should-be-autility-2014-11 [https://perma.cc/FZD2-C9TS] (noting that former-President Barack Obama argued that the FCC should recognize the Internet as a vital service); Internet Access Is ‘a Fundamental…

Feb 2022

Article

Renaming Deadly Force

Scott A. Harman-Heath, J.D. University of Virginia, B.A. McGill University

Three times a day in the United States, a police officer kills someone. On any given day, this person might be an active shooter, a hostage-taker, or a bomber. But on that same day police might also kill a motorist reaching for his license (Philando Castile), someone selling loose cigarettes (Eric Garner), someone who used…

Feb 2022