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Today, the body of former Senator Howard H. Baker Jr. lay in repose across the street from my office in the building that houses the academic center benefacted by and named after him.  (The building itself also bears his name.)  His coffin, draped elegantly in the American flag, is a reminder of a political era essentially gone–but not forgotten (at least by me). 

Senator Baker was a distinguished alumnus and benefactor of The University of Tennessee and the College of Law.  Our main rotunda on the first floor of the law building is named for him.  I dropped by today at the Baker Center for Public Policy to say goodbye to this revered statesman.  I did not make the trip across the street to pay my respects primarily because he was a UT alumnus or benefactor–or even because I knew him (although we shook hands and chatted pleasantly at least once that I can remember) or knew any member of his family.  I went because I deeply admire him and what he did with his public life.  He was the kind of guy–known as “The Great Conciliator”–who exhibited political patience, valued compromise, and didn’t let party politics or ideology stand in the way of what he knew in his gut was right.

In the obituary published by the American Bar Association in the ABA Journal, the following quote caught my eye:

“We are doing the business of the American people,” Baker said in a 1998 speech to members of Congress, explaining his philosophy of government. “And if we cannot be civil to one another, and if we stop dealing with those with whom we disagree, or that we don’t like, we would soon stop functioning altogether.”

Of course, the last bit stings a bit in light of the recent government shutdown.  But . . . doing the business of the American people.  Hmm.  This part of the quote reminded me of the public fiduciary arguments that Donna Nagy raises in her 2011 Boston University Law Review article entitled “Insider Trading, Congressional Officials, and Duties of Entrustment.”  A great read, for those who haven’t yet set aside the time.

However, the quote also made me think about Senator Baker’s engagements over the years with legal issues impacting businesses.  He was certainly pro-business, but he also fought for environmental protection and civil rights, among other things, even when those issues appeared, at least in the short term, to be a net negative for businesses.  What, then, would Senator Baker have said about today’s decision in Hobby Lobby?  Well, we’ll never know.  But I will take a few guesses, and those who knew him or know his politics better than I can feel free to question and correct my prognostications.

From Anne Tucker (who is off filming academic videos this afternon–whatever that means!):

Today’s Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. et al. exempted closely held corporations from complying with the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act.  There is plenty to debate about the opinion—corporations are persons under RFRA and can exercise religion as well as a host of choice quotes from the SCOTUS about “modern corporate law”—and I will leave that fun for another time.  I want to highlight three initial reactions:    

  1. There is no definition of closely held in today’s opinion.  Will we draw lines based on state corporate codes and elections to be S corp?  Will we rely upon the IRS definition of a closely held company?  It is unclear.  There is NOTHING in the opinion that prevents today’s ruling from applying to publically traded, closely held corporations like Wal-Mart.  The line drawing engaged by the SCOTUS in Hobby Lobby is not such a neatly drawn, tight circle, but is a wide net.  I discussed this briefly in a HuffPost Live segment earlier today—here.
  2. This is a statutory, not a constitutional ruling.  On its face.  Of course Congress could amend

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I always enjoy reading Bryan Cave partner Scott Killingsworth’s comments in various LinkedIn groups. In addition to practicing law, he’s a contributing editor to a treatise on the duties of board members. He’s just published a short but thorough essay on “The Privatization of Compliance.” It reminds me of some of the comments that Dean Colin Scott made at Law and Society about tools of private transnational regulation, which include self-regulation, contracts, consumers, industry initiatives, corporate social responsibility programs and meta-regulators. Killingsworth’s abstract is below.

Corporate Compliance is becoming privatized, and privatization is going viral. Achieving consistent legal compliance in today’s regulatory environment is a challenge severe enough to keep compliance officers awake at night and one at which even well-managed companies regularly fail. But besides coping with governmental oversight and legal enforcement, companies now face a growing array of both substantive and process-oriented compliance obligations imposed by trading partners and other private organizations, sometimes but not always instigated by the government. Embodied in contract clauses and codes of conduct for business partners, these obligations often go beyond mere compliance with law and address the methods by which compliance is assured. They create new compliance obligations and enforcement mechanisms and…

This past week, I joined a group of our business law prof colleagues at the National Business Law Scholars Conference out at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.  Headlined by a keynote presentation on “the audience” for business law scholarship from Frank Partnoy and an author-meets-reader session on Michael Dorff‘s new book, Indispensable and Other Myths: The True Story of CEO Pay, the conference featured a staggeringly interesting array of panels on everything from standard corporate governance to financial regulation.  Kudos to the planning committee.

Steve Bainbridge presented Must Salmon Love Meinhard? Agape and Partnership Fiduciary Duties in an opening concurrent panel. If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend it.  Admittedly (as I told Steve), I have an especial interest in the Meinhard case and in the expressive function of decisional law.  But most of us in the business law professor group teach the case in one course or another, and his paper is relevant to many in that context.

Regular readers of this blog have seen several posts discussing the materiality of various SEC disclosures. See here and here for recent examples. I have been vocal about my objection to the Dodd-Frank conflict minerals rule, which requires US issuers to disclose their use of tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold deriving from the Democratic Republic of Congo and surrounding nations, and describe the measures taken to conduct audits and due diligence of their supply chains. See this post and this law review article.

Last year SEC Chair Mary Jo White indicated that she has concerns about the amount and types of disclosures that companies put forth and whether or not they truly assist investors in making informed decisions.  In fact, the agency is undergoing a review of corporate disclosures and has recently announced that rather than focusing on disclosure “overload” the agency wants to look at “effectiveness,” duplication, and “holes in the regulatory regime where additional disclosure may be good for investors.”

I’m glad that the SEC is looking at these issues and I urge lawmakers to consider this SEC focus when drafting additional disclosure regulation. One possible test case is the Business Supply Chain Transparency on Trafficking and…

I have been working on a draft article for the University of Cincinnati Law Review based on a presentation that I gave this spring at the annual Corporate Law Symposium.  This year’s topic was “Crowdfunding Regulations and Their Implications.”  My draft article addresses the public-private divide in the context of the Capital Raising Online While Deterring Fraud and Unethical Non-Disclosure Act–more commonly known as the CROWDFUND Act.  I am using two pieces coauthored by Don Langevoort and Bob Thompson (here and here), as well as three works written by Hillary Sale (here, here, and here) to engage my analysis.

I also will be participating in a discussion group at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools annual conference in August on the publicness theme.  That session is entitled “Does The Public/Private Divide In Federal Securities Regulation Make Sense?” and is scheduled for 3:00 pm on Augut 6th, for those attending the conference.  Michael Guttentag was good enough to recruit the group for this discussion.

All this work on publicness has my head spinning!  There are a number of unique conceptions of pubicness, some overlapping or otherwise interconnected, with different conceptions being useful in different…

The Louisiana Supreme Court recently denied the state’s attempt to collect sales tax on the sale of an RV to a Montana LLC. Thomas v. Bridges, No. 2013-C-1855 (La. 2014).  The LLC was formed for the sole purpose of avoiding RV sales tax (saving the buyer as much as $47,000).  The state argued that the LLC veil should be pierced and the tax should be assessed to the LLC’s sole member claiming fraud. The court disagreed, explaining that “taking actions to avoid sales tax does not constitute fraud. Although tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance is not.” 

There were problems with the state’s attempt from the outset.  First, the sale occurred  in Louisiana, but the RV was housed in Mississippi.  Even if the LLC were to be disregarded, Mississippi, it seems to me, would be the state that should be asserting the claim.  Second, the state attempted to collect from the LLC’s member before ever trying to collect from the LLC.  Thus,  the veil-piercing claim was being used as a post hoc justification for the attempt to recover from the LLC’s member and was not properly raised below.  

This “legal loophole” (which is redundant because if it’s a loophole, it’s legal and…

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has always had a lot of influence – some think too much- and it’s also received quite a bit of press this week. First, the Wall Street Journal reported that the proxy advisory firm slammed Wal-Mart’s board for lack of independence regarding its executive pay practices in particular how compensation is (un)affected by declining company performance. ISS also raised concerns about the company’s ongoing FCPA troubles and how or whether executives will be held accountable. ISS called for more board independence. Given the fact that the Walton family owns 50% of the company stock, it’s not likely that ISS’ recommendations will have much weight, but it’s still noteworthy nonetheless.

This morning, the press reported that ISS took aim at another troubled company, Target. In addition to its revenue declines, Target also reported a massive data breach last year, which led to numerous shareholder derivative suits. ISS recommended that seven of the ten board members lose their seats for failing to adequately monitor the risk. Target has already made a number of significant management changes. This recommendation from ISS may be an even bigger wake up call to board members (including those outside of Target) about…

Professor Joan MacLeod Heminway (Tennessee) has a new article posted on SSRN entitled Investor and Market Protection in the Crowdfunding Era: Disclosing to and for the ‘Crowd.’ I look forward to reading the article this summer.  The article abstract is posted below:

This article focuses on disclosure regulation in a specific context: securities crowdfunding (also known as crowdfund investing or investment crowdfunding). The intended primary audience for disclosures made in the crowdfund investing setting is the “crowd,” an ill-defined group of potential and actual investors in securities offered and sold through crowdfunding. Securities crowdfunding, for purposes of this article, refers to an offering of securities made over the Internet to a broad-based, unstructured group of investors who are not qualified by geography, financial wherewithal, access to information, investment experience or acumen, or any other criterion.

To assess disclosure to and for the crowd, this short symposium piece proceeds in three principal parts before concluding. First, the article briefly describes securities crowdfunding and the related disclosure and regulatory environments. Next, the article summarizes basic principles from scholarly literature on the nature of investment crowds. This literature outlines two principal ways in which the behavioral psychology of crowds interacts with securities markets.

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