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With oral arguments today in the Hobby Lobby case, I thought I’d pile on a few last thoughts:

(1) As I explained here, entities should be able to take on a racial, religious, or gender identity in discrimination claims.  I would add that I feel similarly about sexual orientation, but (though I think it should be) that is still not generally federally protected. To the extent the law otherwise provides a remedy, I’d extend it to the entity. 

(2) It is reasonable to inquire, why is discrimination different than religious practice?  For me, I just don’t think religious exercise by an entity is the same as extending discrimination protection to an entity.  There is something about the affirmative exercise of religion that I don’t think extends well to an entity.   That is, discrimination happens to a person or an entity. Religious practice is an affirmative act that is different.  Basically, reification of the entity to the point of religious practice crosses a line that I think is unnecessary and improper because discrimination protection should be sufficient.

As a follow up to that, I also think it’s a reasonable question to ask: Why is religion different than speech?

I’m trying out a new weekly blog post theme, “The Weekly BLT,” wherein I highlight a few interesting business law tweets that I’ve come across in the past week that have not yet made it to the BLPB.

Statutory provisions allowing for the formation of Delaware Public Benefit Corporations (“PBCs“) went effective August 1, 2013.  According to the latest data I have, 87 PBCs have been formed in Delaware .

While 87 is an extremely small number when compared to the more than 1 million entities formed in Delaware, Delaware has already bested all states that have passed a benefit corporation statute, except for California.  California, which has a 20 month head-start on Delaware, has 139 benefit corporations.

Some states, like New Jersey and South Carolina have been stuck at fewer than 5 benefit corporations for well over a year.

The group of researchers I am working with now estimates that there are about 350 benefit corporations in the U.S. (including PBCs), though the data is relatively difficult to obtain from the secretary of state’s offices and obtaining reliable, complete data is even more difficult.

Currently, there are no significant tax benefits (at the state or federal level) for social enterprises (like PBCs and benefit corporations) in the U.S., but the U.K. recently announced 30% tax relief for their social enterprises. (The U.K. social enterprises are a good bit different than those in the…

Carnegie
On spring break, I found a hardcover copy of Professor David Nasaw’s biography of Andrew Carnegie in a Boone, NC thrift shop for $1.  (Good books and good deals are two of my favorite things).  A New York Times book review is available here.

I only made it about 200 pages into the fascinating 801 page biography before returning to work.  I am currently on page 293, but already have some thoughts to share.

Before digging into this book, “failure” was one of the last words I would have associated with Andrew Carnegie.  Carnegie is well known as one of the “captains of industry” (in the steel business) and as an extremely generous philanthropist.  Even the word “struggle” is not a word I would have associated with Andrew Carnegie; from a distance, everything seemed to come easily for him.

But, like most of us, Carnegie experienced failure, and his life was marked by numerous struggles.

[More after the break] 

It’s proxy season and the Conference Board has released a series of reports on investor engagement and corporate governance. In “The Conference Board Governance Center White Paper: What is the Optimal Balance in the Relative Roles of Management, Directors, and Investors in the Governance of Public Corporations?” the authors provide a 76-page overview of the evolution of US corporate governance, describing key trends and issues.

The report begins by discussing the history of the allocation of roles and responsibilities for governance of public companies. If I thought my law students would read it, I would assign this section to them.  The second part of the paper addresses the legal, social and market trends that have influenced the historical allocation of rights. Specifically, it reviews:

a) the increasing influence of institutional investors resulting from the concentration of ownership in institutional investment, changes in voting rules and practices and more assertive shareholder activism;

b) shifting conceptions about the purpose of the corporation and the duty to maximize corporate value, with a strong emphasis on shareholder wealth maximization;

c) decreased public trust of business leaders following the corporate scandals of 2001-2002 and 2007-2008;

d) federal regulation intended to enhance the influence of shareholders…

News from Delaware.gov (H/T Broc Romanek):

Governor Markell today announced the nomination of Andre G. Bouchard, widely recognized as one of the country’s premier corporate law practitioners, to serve as the 21st Chancellor of the Court of Chancery. If confirmed by the Delaware Senate, Bouchard would succeed the Honorable Leo E. Strine, Jr., who was sworn in as Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court in February.

Bouchard is a graduate of Boston College and Harvard Law School.  Currently, he is the managing partner of Bouchard Margules & Friedlander, P.A in Wilmington, Delaware. 

Looks like my friends in Delaware accurately predicted this nomination back in January.

A hearing in the Delaware Court of Chancery highlights the question raised in my earlier post of institutional shareholder activism and provides a timely example of one brand of shareholder activism:  issue activism.

Yesterday, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster denied Hershey’s motion to dismiss a books-and-records suit brought by shareholder Louisiana Municipal Police Employees’ Retirement System. The suit seeks inspection of corporate books to investigate claims that the chocolate company knowingly used suppliers violating international child labor laws.  A full description of the hearing is available here.

UPDATE, Kent Greenfield who has been involved in the case, provided me with a copy of the Hershey hearing & ruling ( Download Hershey Ruling) as well as some context for the case.  Yesterday’s hearing did two things. First, it clarified the standard of review for motions to dismiss section 220 books and records demands. Citing to Seinfeld v. Verizon Commc’ns, Inc., 909 A.2d 117, 118 (Del. Supr. 2006), the proper standard is whether a shareholder has provided “some evidence to suggest a ‘credible basis’ from which a court can infer that mismanagement, waste or wrongdoing may have occurred.”    Second, the books and record request was brought on …

I am interested in the behavior of institutional investors, including defined benefit plans and large mutual funds, primarily because they trade in people’s retirement savings.   Institutional investors and hedge funds are some of the only remaining investors under the big umbrella heading of “shareholders” that have the resources and incentive to act the way that corporate law theorizes shareholders should act.  They become the lab rats and the test case of governance experiments and debates.

Notably, the passivity of institutional investors has been described, empirically documented by number of initiated shareholder proposals and with voting records on such proposals, and debated at considerable length.  Alan Palmiter, Jill Fisch, Roberta Romano, as well as a recent article by Gilson & Gordon and many others have all grappled with the evidence for and against and provided theories that augment or diminish the view of passivity by institutional investors.

The New York Times DealB%k published an article yesterday, New Alliances in Battle for Corporate Control, describing the coordination between institutional investors (both pension funds and mutual funds) and hedge fund activists.  Drawing from industry sources, the article describes informal coordination of activists courting institutional investors’ votes before…

Ed Whelan at National Review Online (h/t: Prof. Bainbridge) asks, in light of a recent Fourth Circuit opinion, “Will those who (wrongly) think that for-profit corporations are incapable of exercising religion for purposes of RFRA object as vigorously to the concept that for-profit corporations can have a racial identity for purposes of Title VI? If not, why not?”

I have been following the Hobby Lobby case with interest, though I am just delving into its depths now.  After starting through the various amicus briefs, my initial reaction is that the law has not evolved to where it needs to be with respect to protecting those engaging in the widespread use of entities.  As is often the case, my initial reaction is that the answer to Mr. Whelan’s question is somewhere in the middle: I think for-profit corporations are capable of exercising religion under RFRA, but in this case I don’t see the necessary substantial burden, at least when balanced with an individual’s right to make such decisions, to carry the day. (Reasonable minds can disagree on this, but that’s my take). 

Taking a broader look, though, view entities should be able to take on the race, gender…

Professor Jennifer Pacella (CUNY-Baruch) recently posted an article entitled Bounties for Bad Behavior: Rewarding Culpable Whistleblowers under the Dodd-Frank Act and Internal Revenue Code.  The abstract is posted below:

In 2012, Bradley Birkenfeld received a $104 million reward or “bounty” from the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) for blowing the whistle on his employer, UBS, which facilitated a major offshore tax fraud scheme by assisting thousands of U.S. taxpayers to hide their assets in Switzerland. Birkenfeld does not fit the mold of the public’s common perception of a whistleblower. He was himself complicit in this crime and even served time in prison for his involvement. Despite his conviction, Birkenfeld was still eligible for a sizable whistleblower bounty under the IRS Whistleblower Program, which allows rewards for whistleblowers who are convicted conspirators, excluding only those convicted of “planning and initiating” the underlying action. In contrast, the whistleblower program of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank”), which was modeled after the IRS program, precludes rewards for any whistleblower convicted of a criminal violation that is “related to” a securities enforcement proceeding. Therefore, because of his conviction, Birkenfeld would not have been

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