This coming Friday, June 11, at 2 PM, the Federalist Society is hosting a teleforum entitled, Free Speech and Compelled Speech: First Amendment Challenges to a Marketplace of Ideas.  You can register here (I believe registration is free).  What follows is a description of the program.

Section 230 has been understood to shield internet platforms from liability for content posted by users, and also to protect the platforms’ discretion in removing “objectionable” content. 

But policy makers have recently taken a stronger interest in attempting to influence tech companies’ moderation policies.  Some have argued the policies are too restrictive and unduly limit the scope of legitimate public debate in what has become something of a high-tech public square.  Other policy makers have argued the platforms need to more aggressively target “hate speech,” online harassment, and other forms of objectionable content.  And against that background, states are adopting and considering legislation to limit the scope of permissible content moderation to preclude viewpoint discrimination. 

Some have suggested that the §230 protection, in combination with political pressure, create First Amendment state action problems for content moderation.  Others argue that state efforts to protect the expressive interests of social media users would raise First…

On Saturday, March 6, 2021, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm (Eastern Time) the following presentations/discussions are scheduled as part of the next Society of Socio-Economists Meeting (Zoom link and additional information here).

1:00 – 1:30 Welcoming Remarks, Discussion of Pressing Social Issues and Future Meetings

1:30 – 2:25 Ethical Dimensions of Economic Analysis

Deirdre McCloskey (Economics, History and Communication, Emerita, Illinois-Chicago)

Shubha Ghosh (Law and Economics, Syracuse)

2:30 – 3:25 Modern Monetary Theory: Is Money Debt? Does it Matter? Who Decides When the Economy is at Full Capacity?

Rohan Gray (Law, Willamette)

William Black (Law and Economics, Missouri – Kansas City)

Philip Harvey (Law and Economics, Rutgers – Camden)

Nicolaus Tideman (Economics, Virginia Tech)

3:00 – 3:25 Continuation of Discussion of Pressing Social Issues and Future Meetings

3:30 – 3:50 For Whose Benefit Public Corporations?

Sergio Gramitto (Law, Monash) “The Corporate Governance Game”

3:50 – 4:00 Concluding Session.

I found the following in my inbox this morning: Facebook, Twitter, United Airlines and other large companies pledge to boost numbers of diverse leaders (“Nowhere in corporate America have I seen these metrics or an initiative with these types of metrics,” said SVLG CEO Ahmad Thomas in an interview with MarketWatch before the announcement of the initiative.).

That reminded me of some commentary Rod Dreher posted last year in response to similar initiatives by Microsoft and Well Fargo (here):

Nadella didn’t say that Microsoft will attempt to do that; he said that Microsoft will do that. You can only double the number of blacks at the company through discriminatory hiring and firing. If you are white, Asian, or Hispanic, and work at Microsoft, you will not have the same chance at promotion, or perhaps you will even have to be laid off to make room for black managers…. How is Wells Fargo going to double black leadership in five years without actively hiring and firing people on the basis of race? ….

According to theorists of “antiracism” like Ibram X. Kendi, any time you see fewer blacks within an institution …, that is conclusive evidence of…

Holger Fleischer has posted Corporate Purpose: A Management Concept and its Implications for Company Law on SSRN (here).  I like the idea of distinguishing (1) a “management concept” of identifying a corporate purpose “beyond mere profit” from (2) a corporate law conception of the for-profit corporation as a profit-maximizing entity.  Here is the abstract:

Many companies have recently been following the so-called corporate purpose concept that is recommended by leading management scholars. To this end, they identify a raison d’être for their enterprise that goes beyond mere profit making and they anchor it in the entire value chain. This paper puts the corporate purpose concept in perspective by linking it to the larger debate on corporate social responsibility and by outlining its theoretical foundations and practical application. It then goes on by explaining how this management concept fits into the company law framework, looking to France and the UK as well as to the US and Germany. Finally, this paper assesses various policy proposals made by leading purpose proponents, ranging from mandatory purpose clauses in the articles of association to say-on-purpose shareholder voting and dual-purpose business organisations.

Over at Law & Liberty, James Rogers reviews Cass Sunstein’s “Too Much Information: Understanding What You Don’t Want to Know.”  Below is a brief excerpt from the review.  There are apparently at least some references to the SEC in the book.

[Sunstein] writes, “The primary question in this book is simple: When should government require companies, employers, hospitals, and others to disclose information?” His answer, he writes, is simple, although perhaps deceptively simple. Government should require disclosure “When information would significantly improve people’s lives.” The surprise is that the book focuses mainly on the argument that making judgment of when disclosure “improves people’s lives” can be so complicated that government policymakers often should not attempt it except under carefully identified conditions…. The book reads almost as though Sunstein started the book with one hypothesis in mind—that he would develop a framework that would help with developing sensible government disclosure policies going forward—but he instead became increasingly skeptical of his initial project as he worked through the research.

Professor Megan Wischmeier Shaner (Associate Dean for Research & Scholarship; President’s Associates Presidential Professor of Law, University of Oklahoma College of Law) recently published Privately Ordered Fiduciaries (28 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 345 (2020)). Below is an excerpt from the Introduction that might be of interest to readers.

Over the past two decades, legal and practical hurdles to developing doctrine addressing the corporate officer have been cleared away. In 2004, the Delaware Code was amended to provide for personal jurisdiction over nonresident officers of Delaware corporations. “Around this same time there was a dramatic shift underway in corporate governance norms that had been buttressed by federal regulation to create greater board independence from officers.” With fewer board seats occupied by company executives, officer conduct was no longer reliably regulated by bootstrapping obligations to an officer’s concurrent director status, underscoring the need for specific rules addressing officer obligations.

The separation of director and officer status in public corporations led to a heightened focus on officers as distinct legal actors in the corporation and on the accompanying legal standards that would govern them. The Delaware Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in Gantler v. Stephens clarified, in part, the fiduciary obligations and accountability of…

Via Christopher Rufo (here):

Today, President Biden rescinded the Trump executive order banning critical race theory training programs from the federal government.

Critical race theory is a grave threat to the American way of life. It divides Americans by race and traffics in the pernicious concepts of race essentialism, racial stereotyping, and race-based segregation—all under a false pursuit of “social justice.” Critical race theory training programs have become commonplace in academia, government, and corporate life, where they have sought to advance the ideology through cult-like indoctrination, intimidation, and harassment.

It is time to fight back. Last year, I declared a “one-man war” against critical race theory, which led to the presidential order banning these trainings from the federal government. Today, I am announcing a new coalition of law firms and legal foundations with the explicit goal of fighting critical race theory in the courts. This coalition, called Stop Critical Race Theory, has already filed three lawsuits against public institutions conducting critical race theory programs and, in the coming months, will file additional lawsuits in the state and federal courts.

Our ambition is to take one of these cases to the United States Supreme Court and establish that…