Business Law Prof Blog

Huhn on the Implications of Daimler AG for Hobby Lobby

My Akron colleague Will Huhn just posted “2013-2014 Supreme Court Term: Court's Decision in Daimler AG v. Bauman, No. 11-965: Implications for the Birth Control Mandate Cases?” over at his blog wilsonhuhn.com.  Here is a brief excerpt, but you should go read the entire post:

On January 14, 2014, the Supreme Court issued its decision in favor of Daimler AG (the maker of Mercedes-Benz), ruling that the federal courts in California lacked personal jurisdiction over Daimler to adjudicate claims for human rights violations arising in Argentina. The ruling of the Court may have implications for the birth control mandate cases pending before the Court in Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties…. In those cases the owners of two private, for-profit business corporations contend that their individual rights to freedom of religion "pass through" to the corporation -- that the corporations are in effect the "agents" of the principal shareholders, and that this is why the corporations have the right to deny their employees health insurance coverage for birth control. In Daimler the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had held that MBUSA was the "agent" of Daimler AG, and that the substantial business presence of MBUSA in California could be imputed to Daimler AG. The Supreme Court was not persuaded by this agency analysis…. It would be anomalous for the Court to adhere to corporate identity for purposes of personal jurisdiction and liability for tort, and yet to ignore corporate identity to give effect to the personal religious choices of stockholders.

Sitkoff explains why “a mandatory fiduciary core is ... reconcilable with an economic theory of fiduciary law.”

Robert H. Sitkoff recently posted “An Economic Theory of Fiduciary Law” on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

This chapter restates the economic theory of fiduciary law, making several fresh contributions. First, it elaborates on earlier work by clarifying the agency problem that is at the core of all fiduciary relationships. In consequence of this common economic structure, there is a common doctrinal structure that cuts across the application of fiduciary principles in different contexts. However, within this common structure, the particulars of fiduciary obligation vary in accordance with the particulars of the agency problem in the fiduciary relationship at issue. This point explains the purported elusiveness of fiduciary doctrine. It also explains why courts apply fiduciary law both categorically, such as to trustees and (legal) agents, as well as ad hoc to relationships involving a position of trust and confidence that gives rise to an agency problem.

Second, this chapter identifies a functional distinction between primary and subsidiary fiduciary rules. In all fiduciary relationships we find general duties of loyalty and care, typically phrased as standards, which proscribe conflicts of interest and prescribe an objective standard of care. But we also find specific subsidiary fiduciary duties, often phrased as rules, that elaborate on the application of loyalty and care to commonly recurring circumstances in the particular form of fiduciary relationship. Together, the general primary duties of loyalty and care and the specific subsidiary rules provide for governance by a mix of rules and standards that offers the benefits of both while mitigating their respective weaknesses.

Finally, this chapter revisits the puzzle of why fiduciary law includes mandatory rules that cannot be waived in a relationship deemed fiduciary. Committed economic contractarians, such as Easterbrook and Fischel, have had difficulty in explaining why the parties to a fiduciary relationship do not have complete freedom of contract. The answer is that the mandatory core of fiduciary law serves a cautionary and protective function within the fiduciary relationship as well as an external categorization function that clarifies rights for third parties. The existence of a mandatory fiduciary core is thus reconcilable with an economic theory of fiduciary law.

Gelter & Helleringer on “Constituency Directors and Corporate Fiduciary Duties”

Martin Gelter & Geneviève Helleringer posted “Constituency Directors and Corporate Fiduciary Duties” on SSRN a few weeks ago, and I’m finally getting around to passing on the abstract:

In this chapter, we identify a fundamental contradiction in the law of fiduciary duty of corporate directors across jurisdictions, namely the tension between the uniformity of directors’ duties and the heterogeneity of directors themselves. Directors are often formally or informally selected by specific shareholders (such as a venture capitalist or an important shareholder) or other stakeholders of the corporation (such as creditors or employees), or they are elected to represent specific types of shareholders (e.g. minority investors). In many jurisdictions, the law thus requires or facilitates the nomination of what has been called “constituency” directors. Legal rules tend nevertheless to treat directors as a homogeneous group that is expected to pursue a uniform goal. We explore this tension and suggest that it almost seems to rise to the level of hypocrisy: Why do some jurisdictions require employee representatives that are then seemingly not allowed to strongly advocate employee interests? Looking at US, UK, German and French law, our chapter explores this tension from the perspective of economic and behavioral theory.

Fox on What We’ve Learned from the Financial Crisis

Really great piece by Justin Fox on “What We’ve Learned from the Financial Crisis” over at the Harvard Business Review.  What follows is a brief excerpt, but you'll want to go read the whole thing.

Five years ago the global financial system seemed on the verge of collapse. So did prevailing notions about how the economic and financial worlds are supposed to function. The basic idea that had governed economic thinking for decades was that markets work…. In the summer of 2007, though, the markets for some mortgage securities stopped functioning…. [T]he economic downturn was definitely worse than any other since the Great Depression, and the world economy is still struggling to recover…. Five years after the crash of 2008 is still early to be trying to determine its intellectual consequences. Still, one can see signs of change…. To me, three shifts in thinking stand out: (1) Macroeconomists are realizing that it was a mistake to pay so little attention to finance. (2) Financial economists are beginning to wrestle with some of the broader consequences of what they’ve learned over the years about market misbehavior. (3) Economists’ extremely influential grip on a key component of the economic world—the corporation—may be loosening.

Fox goes on to dissect each of these shifts, putting them in historical perspective.  As I said, I think it is well worth your time to read his entire piece.  A couple of additional noteworthy quotes from his analysis of item (3) above follow:

• [M]ost economic theories also build upon a common foundation of self-interested individuals or companies seeking to maximize something or other (utility, profit) …. Still, one narrow way of looking at the world can’t be the only valid path toward understanding its workings. There’s also a risk that emphasizing individual self-interest above all else may even discourage some of the behaviors and attitudes that make markets work in the first place—because markets need norms and limits to function smoothly.

• I don’t think the shareholder value critics have come up with a coherent alternative. We’re all still waiting for some other framework with which to understand the corporation—and economists may not be able to deliver it. Who will? Sociologists have probably been the most persistent critics of shareholder value, and of the atomized way in which economists view the world. Some, such as Neil Fligstein, of UC Berkeley, and Gerald Davis, of the University of Michigan, have proposed alternative models of the corporation that emphasize stability and cohesion over transaction and value.