Business Law Prof Blog

Corporate Transparency Act Held Unconstitutional

A U.S. District Court judge sitting in the Northeastern Division of the Northern District of Alabama found the Corporate Transparency Act (affectionately referred to in short form as the CTA) unconstitutional as detailed in a memorandum opinion issued on Friday.  The opinion granted the plaintiffs, the National Small Business United (NSBU) and Isaac Winkles, an NSBA member, their summary judgment motion on this basis.  The accompanying final judgment permanently enjoined the Secretary of the Treasury and other government defendants, as well as "any other agency or employee acting on behalf of the United States," from enforcing the Corporate Transparency Act against the plaintiffs in the litigation.

Many of us business law profs--and all of our business law practice brethren--have been following the CTA, endeavoring to gain a more comprehensive understanding of its provisions and fashioning advice on compliance.  The CTA, enacted in 2021 and effective as of January 1, 2024, requires nonexempt companies (domestic or foreign corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities formed or, in the case of foreign entities, registered to do business in any U.S. state or tribal jurisdiction) to disclose certain information, including about their beneficial owners, to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), part of the U.S. Treasury Department.  Exempt firms include (among others) “large operating companies” with a presence in the U.S., entities with a class of securities registered under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (or registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended, or the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, as amended), and controlled or wholly owned subsidiaries of certain exempt firms.

The March 1 memorandum opinion specifically holds that the U.S. Congress acted outside the scope of its constitutional power in enacting the CTA.  In holding the CTA unconstitutional, the court found that the congressional enactment of the CTA was not authorized under the Commerce Clause, Congress's taxing power, or the Necessary and Proper Clause and could not be justified as incidental to the exercise by Congress of its express legislative authority.  As to the Commerce Clause--which has been interpreted broadly in many contexts--the court noted that "the CTA does not regulate economic or commercial activity on its face."  The court also found that the CTA does not have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.  In essence, the court finds the CTA analogous to incorporation--a state entity structure and governance matter and not a matter of interstate commerce.

It will be interesting to see if there is any reaction at the federal level or any fallout in other federal trial courts.  The memorandum opinion is well written and easy to follow.  Having said that, although I am no constitutional law scholar, it seems that the court's reasoning is subject to attack on a number of points.  I will continue to keep my ear to the ground on this.

Why the Judge Was Right to Rule Against DeSantis' Stop WOKE Act

As much as I love being a professor, it can be hard. I’m not talking about the grading, keeping the attention of the TikTok generation, or helping students with the rising mental health challenges.

I mean that it’s hard to know what to say in a classroom. On the one hand, you want to make sure that students learn and understand the importance of critical thinking and disagreeing without being disagreeable.

On the other hand, you worry about whether a factual statement taken out of context or your interpretation of an issue could land you in the cross hairs of cancel culture without the benefit of any debate or discussion.

I’m not an obvious person who should be worried about this. Although I learned from some of the original proponents of critical race theory in law school, that’s not my area of expertise. I teach about ESG, corporate law, and compliance issues.

But I think about this dilemma when I talk about corporate responsibility and corporate speech on hot button issues. I especially think about it when I teach business and human rights, where there are topics that may be too controversial to teach because some issues are too close to home and for many students and faculty members, it’s difficult to see the other side. So I sometimes self censor.

My colleagues who teach in public universities in Florida had even more reason to self censor because of the Stop WOKE act, which had eight topics related to race, gender, critical race theory and other matters that the State deemed “noxious” or problematic.

Yesterday, a federal court issued a 139-page opinion calling the law “dystopian.” The court noted that Justice Sotomayor could violate the law by guest lecturing in a law school and reading from her biography where she talks about how she benefitted from affirmative action. That’s absurd.

I had the chance to give my views to the Washington Post yesterday. This law never personally affected me but as the court noted, the university is the original marketplace of ideas. I told the reporter that one of my areas of expertise, ESG, is full of the kinds of issues that the government of the State of Florida has issues with. I told him that I was glad that I worked at a private university because academic freedom makes me more comfortable to raise issues.  I noted that students need the ability to play devil's advocate and speak freely because there's no way to mold the next generation of thinkers and lawmakers without free speech. I explained that you can't write the laws if you're not willing to hear more than one point of view. 

I hope that we get back to the days when professors don’t self censor, whether there’s a law in place or not. Of course there are some statements that are unacceptable and should never be taught in a classroom.

But I worry that some in this generation don’t know the difference between controversial and contemptible. That goes for my friends of all ideologies.

I worry that some students are missing out on so much because our society doesn’t know how to engage in civil discourse about weighty topics. So people either rant or stay silent.

In any event, my rant is over.

Today is a day for celebration.

Congratulations to my colleagues in public universities.

Reason has won out.

Padfield on "the Omnipresent Specter of Political Bias" in Corporate Decision-Making (and 3 other papers)

I've finally gotten around to updating my SSRN page.  I would love to hear any comments you might have.

1.  Corporate Governance and the Omnipresent Specter of Political Bias: The Duty to Calculate ROI

2.  Totalitarian Nudges, Illusory Externalities, and Utopian Benefits: Reflections on the 34th Economics Institute for Law Professors

3.  Killing Corporations to Save Humans: How Corporate Personhood, Human Rights, and the Corporate Death Penalty Intersect

4.  The Helper Therapy Principle: Using the Power of Service to Save Addicts

Liquor Retailers, the Commerce Clause, and Federalism (Oh, My!)

In Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Assn. v. Thomas, the SCOTUS affirmed decisions of the Sixth Circuit and Federal District Court of Middle Tennessee finding Tennessee’s 2-year residency requirement applicable for retail liquor store license applicants unconstitutional as a violation of the Commerce Clause that is not saved by the 21st Amendment.  Specifically, in an opinion dated June 26, 2019, Justice Alito concluded that "Tennessee’s 2-year durational-residency requirement plainly favors Tennesseans over nonresidents" and, addressing the claim that Tennessee's regulation nevertheless is valid under Section 2 of the 21st Amendment, found that "the record is devoid of any 'concrete evidence' showing that the 2-year residency requirement actually promotes public health or safety; nor is there evidence that nondiscriminatory alternatives would be insufficient to further those interests."  This is a huge win for the alcoholic beverage retail industry nationwide, even of it is a deemed loss for smaller local liquor retailers in Tennessee who were protected by the stringent residency requirements (although the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission had stopped enforcing the requirements against new applicants).

[Note: BLPB reader Tom N. predicted this result in his comment to this Josh Fershee post earlier in the year.]

A number of things about the Court's opinion interest me and also may interest you.  First, the Petitioner, a trade association, chose to only challenge the Sixth Circuit's opinion on only one of the two residency requirements struck down at the Sixth Circuit level.  Second, the Petitioner chose not to argue that the initial application residency requirement could be sustained under the dormant Commerce Clause as a narrowly tailored measure designed to “advance a legitimate local purpose.”  Rather, the Petitioner chose to argue that the law could be sustained under Section 2 of the 21st Amendment because the residency requirement promoted public health and safety.  And finally, the Court's opinion includes some interesting history on alcohol regulation (including Prohibition) and the dormant Commerce Clause.

The dissent, written by Justice Gorsuch (joined by Justice Thomas), takes a states' rights viewpoint under Section 2 of the 21st Amendment.  The concluding text (citations have been omitted for readability) is somewhat passionate.

Like it or not, those who adopted the Twenty-first Amendment took the view that reasonable people can disagree about the costs and benefits of free trade in alcohol. They left us with clear instructions that the free-trade rules this Court has devised for “cabbages and candlesticks” should not be applied to alcohol. Under the terms of the compromise they hammered out, the regulation of alcohol wasn’t left to the imagination of a committee of nine sitting in Washington, D. C., but to the judgment of the people themselves and their local elected representatives. State governments were supposed to serve as “laborator[ies]” of democracy, with “broad power to regulate liquor under §2,” If the people wish to alter this arrangement, that is their sovereign right. But until then, I would enforce the Twenty-first Amendment as they wrote and originally understood it.

Nevertheless, I am more persuaded by the majority opinion.

Regardless, the opinions both offer some fun reading for those interested in the dormant commerce clause or in alcohol regulation.

[Editorial Note: I found a few typos in this after posting--enough that it bears mention here that I corrected them.  Thanks to coblogger Ann Lipton for spotting a particularly egregious spellcheck-generated error.]

A Business Lawyer's Obligation to Speak

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"A lawyer, as a member of the legal profession, is a representative of clients, an officer of the legal system and a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice."

Am. Bar Assoc., Model Rules of Prof. Conduct Preamble ¶ 1 (emphasis added)

Although we business lawyers do not talk about this much--at least not in forums like this--as licensed attorneys, we have an obligation to speak out publicly on matters of justice.  Paragraph 6 of the Preamble to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct offers details on this role.  Among my favorite parts of this paragraph from the Preamble are the following duties that most commonly impact my work:

• "As a public citizen, a lawyer should seek improvement of the law, access to the legal system, the administration of justice and the quality of service rendered by the legal profession."
• "As a member of a learned profession, a lawyer should cultivate knowledge of the law beyond its use for clients, employ that knowledge in reform of the law and work to strengthen legal education."
• "In addition, a lawyer should further the public's understanding of and confidence in the rule of law and the justice system because legal institutions in a constitutional democracy depend on popular participation and support to maintain their authority."
• "A lawyer should be mindful of deficiencies in the administration of justice . . . ."

Also, from Preamble ¶7, I note the lawyer's obligation to "strive to attain the highest level of skill, to improve the law and the legal profession and to exemplify the legal profession's ideals of public service."  And Preamble ¶5 notes the lawyer's duty "to challenge the rectitude of official action."  Although the Model Rules themselves focus little attention on the lawyer's role as a public citizen, I have always taken that role quite seriously.

I have been a consistent servant to bench and bar over much of my career, both in Tennessee (where I hold an active license to practice) and in Massachusetts (where I first practiced law and continue to have an inactive law license).  I am proud to say that The University of Tennessee College of Law recently honored me for that service.  This public service work sometimes involves speaking Truth to Power: telling policy makers they have the law wrong or are interpreting it incorrectly or improvidently in context.  This service also comprises (among other things) informing the public about important matters of law and policy as they impact various constituencies, educating oneself about new developments that impact law and law reform, and seeking improvements to the law that best align with desired policy objectives.  Having worked on all of the business entity law reform projects in Tennessee since 2000, my continuously developing skills in these areas have been battle-tested many times.  I have written in this space about some of the battles and issues (see here, here, and here, e.g.), in part as a means of complying with these public-facing duties.

Of course, the licensed attorney who also is a university professor is not exempt from these obligations.  For these lawyers, however, especially those employed by public universities, the number of touch-points with matters of public justice may increase.  I teach primarily in the same subject matters that inform my service to the bench and bar--business law.  However, my work as a law professor encompasses not only business law matters, but also matters relating to the administration of justice in the educational setting both in and outside the College of Law.  In particular, as our campus Faculty Senate President (2010-11) and as a faculty advisor to campus student organizations in and outside the law school over the course of my 18.5 years of law teaching, I have found myself faced with a fascinating array of legal issues that intersect with public policy, public education, and educational policy--legal issues that, for example, implicate "the administration of justice," raise questions about "the public's understanding of and confidence in the rule of law and the justice system," and represent or reveal potential "deficiencies in the administration of justice."  My obligation to speak out on these matters has required me to "cultivate knowledge of the law" in new areas related to (among other things) law reform and, on occasion, improvements to legal education.

As a Faculty Senate leader, for example, I confronted important legal issues relating to same-sex employee benefits and state-proposed legislation allowing faculty and staff with gun permits to carry their guns on campus.  (The cartoon above portrays me moderating the Faculty Senate debate on the guns-on-campus issue.  Unfortunately, as you can see, the cartoonist failed to accurately depict my gender. He later apologized for the oversight.)  But perhaps most prominently, I have had to enhance and use my knowledge of the First Amendment and free speech precepts in my work as a faculty advisor to Sexual Empowerment and Awareness at Tennessee, the student group that plans, funds, and implements our campus Sex Week, a week-long set of events focusing on sex-positive sex education produced by students for students.  (I will skip here the story of how I came to advise that group, in the interest of space. But let's just say that the founders of the organization made a compelling case for more and better sex education on our campus and I had some skills and connections that they thought could be of help.) These are but a few examples.  My professional obligation to speak out on legal matters involving justice has been triggered many times over the years.

I also should note here that, for law professors who are licensed to practice, debates on matters of justice not only implicate the lawyer's professional responsibility but also interact with academic freedom and First Amendment rights.  This post is already getting too long, so I will not get into those matters here. Suffice it to say, they are different protections, but either or both could apply to the public communication of matters involving the administration of justice, law reform, legal education, and public education on matters of legal significance.

The protections of academic freedom and the First Amendment certainly are helpful to university professors of all sorts, including law professors who are licensed to practice.  However, my main purpose in this post is to shed a bit of light on the professional responsibility obligations that a licensed business lawyer has to speak out in various contexts.  While we do not often think of business lawyers as justice and law reform advocates, licensed attorneys practicing business law are bound by the same professional duties that bind all licensed attorneys--including the important obligations a lawyer has as a public citizen responsible for the quality of justice.  For a business law professor who is licensed to practice law, these obligations extend beyond teaching and scholarship and into the law professor's public, university, and campus service.  I submit that this makes the lives of business lawyers--like all lawyers--challenging.  Yet, I can personally testify that the obligation to speak also can be both enlightening and rewarding.

Quotes from a Draft: The Search for an Egalitarian First Amendment

Jeremy Kessler and David Pozen have posted a draft of their paper The Search for an Egalitarian First Amendment on SSRN (available here).  In skimming the paper, I came across a number of quotes, including a couple of citations, I thought readers of this blog might find of interest. So, here they are, in no particular order:

-- One does not need to read Piketty ... to guess that equating corporations’ rights to spend money, sell data, and trim benefits with citizens’ First Amendment rights might prove controversial in a world of bank bailouts and mortgage foreclosures.

-- the question whether the Free Speech Clause permits a legislature to limit the election-related spending of corporations, unions, or wealthy individuals in the service of antiplutocratic goals. To help answer this question in the face of mixed precedent and negligible Founding-era evidence, the Justices have adverted to each of the three major normative theories of the First Amendment [pursuit of truth, the promotion of individual autonomy, and the facilitation of democratic self-government].

-- Both the majority and the dissent in Citizens United thus plausibly invoked each and every one of the three major First Amendment theories, as well as the value of equality itself, in support of their dueling positions. 

-- For a decade now, the “anxiety that the ‘Great Recession’ . . . defines a new economic normal,” in which the wealthiest
individuals take an ever larger piece of an ever shrinking pie, has shaped American public culture.

-- “Pikettymania” revolved around the stark neo-Marxist claim that “capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.”

-- it is not just the current composition of the Supreme Court or its most controversial free speech decisions that account for the rise of First Amendment Lochnerism—a First Amendment jurisprudence that disables redistributive regulation and exacerbates socioeconomic inequality

-- The move from speaker to system is the most powerful move in the contemporary grammar of egalitarian First Amendment argument; its underlying account of free speech does not merely complicate or chisel away at the deregulatory Lochnerian paradigm but supplies a comprehensive alternative.

-- a First Amendment-industrial complex. Mapping the contours of this complex is well beyond the scope of this Essay. The basic point, for present purposes, is that arguments for a deregulatory First Amendment are now promoted not only
(or even primarily) by for-profit companies seeking to minimize their own labor costs or regulatory burdens, but also by a growing set of nominally depoliticized nonprofits with varying degrees of connection to the business community

-- An additional feature of informational capitalism extends the potential reach of First Amendment Lochnerism: the dominant role played by private owners of the platforms through which information circulates online and within which ever more data is commodified and mined for economic value. Even though they control the infrastructure of digital communication and function as the “new governors” of the digital public sphere, companies like Facebook and Google are generally assumed to not be bound by the First Amendment because they are not state actors. Instead of empowering users to challenge their policies, the First Amendment empowers the companies themselves to challenge statutes and regulations intended to promote antidiscrimination norms or users’ speech and privacy, among other values. First Amendment law not only fails to check the internet’s new governors and the inequalities that pervade their platforms, but also stands in the way of legislative and administrative correctives.

-- The neoliberal preference is not necessarily for “free markets” as such, but for a regulatory environment that prioritizes “familiar protections of property and contract” along with “a favorable return on investment and managerial authority.” In our digital age, the facilitation of these preferences has fallen to the “information state,” the set of national (or international) bureaucracies that oversee the operations of informational capitalism. Within these bureaucracies, “mandates or bans on conduct”—such as traditional labor laws, wage and price controls, or licensing regimes—are apt to be rejected as overly market-disruptive and replaced whenever possible with “‘lighter-touch’ forms of governance . . . such as disclosure requirements” and other regulatory techniques that further the production and circulation of commercially salient information.

-- Cases decided by the Roberts Court, the Rehnquist Court, the Burger Court, and even the Stone Court have been singled out as the inflection point when First Amendment doctrine took its inegalitarian turn.

-- For an ideologically diverse range of scholars, policymakers, and activists, growing inequality names both the deep cause and the dangerous effect of a set of overlapping conflicts—economic, racial, cultural, constitutional—that threaten the stability of contemporary U.S. society.

-- Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310, 424–25 (2010) (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech.”).

-- Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310, 441 (2010) (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (arguing that “the Constitution does, in fact, permit numerous ‘restrictions on the speech of some in order to prevent a few from drowning out the many’” (quoting Nixon v. Shrink Mo. Gov’t PAC, 528 U.S. 377, 402 (2000) (Breyer, J., concurring)))

At SEALS Saturday, 8/11? Stop by 9-11 AM for: "Discussion Group: The Role of Corporate Personhood in Masterpiece Cakeshop"

The Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Annual Meeting is upon us. If you are free from 9-11 AM this coming Saturday, Aug. 11, please stop by our discussion group on The Role of Corporate Personhood in Masterpiece Cakeshop. Don't worry about the fact that SCOTUS ignored the personhood issue -- we'll have plenty to talk about.

Here is a summary of the program:

In the United States Supreme Court case of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the issue presented is: “Whether applying Colorado's public accommodations law to compel the petitioner to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the free speech or free exercise clauses of the First Amendment.” A group of corporate law professors has filed an amicus brief in support of the CCRC. One of the arguments in that brief is: “Because Of The Separate Legal Personality Of Corporations And Shareholders, The Constitutional Interests Of Shareholders Should Not Be Projected Onto The Corporation.” This discussion group features a dialogue on the pros and cons of this argument, together with related analysis and observations.

I'll be moderating, and here is a list of dicussants:

Professor Eric Chaffee, University of Toledo College of Law; Professor Sergio Gramitto, Cornell Law School; Professor Joan Heminway, The University of Tennessee College of Law; Professor Arnold Loewy, Texas Tech University School of Law; Professor Brett McDonnell, University of Minnesota Law School; Professor George Mocsary, Southern Illinois University School of Law; Professor James Nelson, University of Houston Law Center; Professor Thomas Rutledge, Stoll, Kennon & Ogden; Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Stetson University College of Law.

Hope to see you there!

Call for Papers/Participants: The Role of Corporate Personhood in Masterpiece Cakeshop

I am putting together a panel or discussion group (depending on how many folks respond positively) for the SEALS conference for next summer, which is scheduled to be held August 5-11, 2018, at the Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (details here).

Here is the proposed title and a brief draft description (which may have to be shortened for the submission):

The Role of Corporate Personhood in Masterpiece Cakeshop

The United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission on Dec. 5, 2017 (SCOTUSblog summary here). The issue presented in that case is: “Whether applying Colorado's public accommodations law to compel the petitioner to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the free speech or free exercise clauses of the First Amendment.” A group of corporate law professors have filed an amicus brief in support to the CCRC (available here). One of the two arguments in that brief is: “Because Of The Separate Legal Personality Of Corporations And Shareholders, The Constitutional Interests Of Shareholders Should Not Be Projected Onto The Corporation.” This [panel] [discussion group] features [paper presentations] [a dialogue] on the pros and cons of this argument, together with related analysis and observations. Please note that the Supreme Court will likely have issued its opinion in the case by the time of the panel/discussion.

Please email me at [email protected] if you would like to participate in this program, letting me know if you are interested in presenting a paper, participating in a discussion, or both. Also, let me know if you know of anyone else who may want to participate—or just pass this on to others. I must file the proposal soon in order to ensure its consideration (the “best practices” deadline for submissions has already passed).

Summer Reading: John Inazu - Confident Pluralism

These days it is easy to get discouraged on how divided our nation seems to be on a number of issues. John Inazu, Distinguished Professor of Law, Religion, and Political Science at Washington University, maps a way forward in his book Confident Pluralism (2016).

The book is divided into two parts: (1) Constitutional Commitments, and (2) Civic Practices.

The first part “contend[s] that recent constitutional doctrine has departed from our longstanding embrace of pluralism and the political arrangements that make pluralism possible.” (8) Further, the first part offers guideposts for future decisions and political solutions. The first part argues for both inclusion and dissent, for the free formation of voluntary groups, for meaningful access to public forums, and for access to publicly available funding for diverse organizations. Provocatively, Inazu claims that Bob Jones case – which stripped tax-exempt status from Bob Jones University due to its prohibition of interracial dating/marriage – is “normatively attractive to almost everyone, [but] is conceptually wrong.” (75) Inazu claims that “[t]he IRS should not limit tax-exempt status based on viewpoint of ideology.” (79) He extends the argument to “generally available resources.” While the Trinity Lutheran case was decided by the Supreme Court after publication of Confident Pluralism the decision seems in line with Inazu’s argument about the provision of ”generally available resources” to all types of organizations. Inazu does concede “Neither [the inclusion of dissent] premise is absolute. Inclusion will stop short of giving toddlers the right to vote or legally insane people the right to bear arms. Dissent will not extend to child molester or cannibals.” (16) I fully never figured out how he draws these lines, as he discusses other controversial topics that the majority of people strongly object to, but perhaps he only seeks to exclude when virtually everyone in society agrees.

The second part “canvass[es] the civic practices of confident pluralism that for the most part lie beyond the reach of the law.” (10) The second part centers around civic aspirations of tolerance, humility, and patience. As defined by Inazu, “Tolerance is the recognition that people are for the most part free to pursue their own beliefs and practices, even those beliefs and practices we find morally objectionable. Humility takes the further step of recognizing that others will sometimes find our beliefs and practices morally objectionable, and that we can’t always “prove” that we are right and they are wrong. Patience points toward restraint, persistence, and endurance in our interactions across difference.” (11). In this part, he describes the “hurtful insult” and the “conversation stopper” as speech we should aspire to avoid. (97-100). The hurtful insult includes terms like “fat, ugly, stupid, friendless.” (97). The aim of the conversation stopper is not primarily used to wound (as the hurtful insult is) but rather to shut down the conversation. Terms like “close-minded, extremist, heretical, and militant” fall in the conversation stopper category. While Inazu admits that those terms can be hurtful, he claims that they are mainly used to shut down reasoned debate.

In conclusion, this is a timely book and is well worth reading. At under 170 pages (including the notes), it is an extremely quick read, but the book is also worth pondering for extended time. Inazu encourages relationships across differences, such as Dan Cathy (Chick-fil-A) and Shane Windmeyer (Campus Pride) and former President Barack Obama and former Republican senator Tom Coburn. (124) I’d add the friendships of the late, conservative justice Antonin Scalia with his liberal colleagues on the Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. With Inazu, I suggest face-to face conversations with friends with different, strongly-held beliefs. While social media and electronic communication can sometimes suffice between in-person meetings, tough topics are best handled around a table and after trust has been earned. Personally, I count my friendships with those who see the world very differently than I do as some of my most valuable relationships, and those friendships make it difficult to construct the straw men we see so frequently in TV news “debates.”

For more, Paul Horwitz (Alabama) shares some thorough and thoughtful notes on the book here. 

Scholarship Highlight: David Min on Corporate Political Activity

UC Irvine law professor, David Min, has a new article titled, Corporate Political Activity and Non-Shareholder Agency Costs, in theYale Journal on Regulation.  Professor Min examines corporate constitutional law  in recent examples such as Citizens United, through the lens of nonshareholder dissenters.  

The courts have never considered the problem of dissenting nonshareholders in assessing regulatory restrictions on corporate political activity. This Article argues that they should. It is the first to explore the potential agency costs that corporate political activity creates for nonshareholders, and in so doing, it lays out two main arguments. First, these agency costs may be significant, as I illustrate through several case studies. Second, neither corporate law nor private ordering provides solutions to this agency problem. Indeed, because the theoretical arguments for shareholder primacy in corporate law are largely inapplicable for corporate political activity, corporate law may actually serve to exacerbate the agency problems that such activity creates for non-shareholders. Private ordering, which could take the form of contractual covenants restricting corporate political activity, also seems unlikely to solve this problem, due to the large economic frictions facing such covenants. These findings have potentially significant ramifications for the Court’s corporate political speech jurisprudence, particularly as laid out in Bellotti and Citizens United. One logical conclusion is that these decisions, regardless of their constitutional merit, make for very bad public policy, insofar as they preempt much-needed regulatory solutions for reducing non-shareholder agency costs, and thus may have the effect of inhibiting efficient corporate ordering and capital formation. Another outgrowth of this analysis is that nonshareholder agency costs may provide an important rationale for government regulation of corporate political activity.

In examining corporate political activity, Professor Min, expertly blends and connects agency theory to corporate theories of the firm.  He rebuts traditional arguments against nonshareholder constituents such as residual interest holders (shareholders), the role of private ordering and provides 3 detailed case studies illustrating the costs of CPA on nonshareholder constituents. Among the proposals and options explored to mitigate these agency costs, Professor Min suggests that the existence of agency costs to nonshareholders--an area heretofore unexamined in corporate law--could justify a regulatory intervention.

 

AT

 

What Do Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and 220 Law Professors Have in Common?

Lately, I’ve been researching the twelve nation Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty (“TPP”) because I am looking at investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) in my work in progress proposing a model bilateral investment treaty between the U.S. and Cuba.

The TPP, which both Trump and Clinton oppose, has the support of U.S. business. Although President Obama has pushed the treaty as part of his legacy, just this morning, Vice-President Biden added his pessimistic views about its passage. More interestingly, over 220 law and economics academics, led by Harvard’s Laurence Tribe, have come out publicly to oppose TPP, stating:

ISDS grants foreign corporations and investors a special legal privilege: the right to initiate dispute settlement proceedings against a government for actions that allegedly violate loosely defined investor rights to seek damages from taxpayers for the corporation’s lost profits. Essentially, corporations and investors use ISDS to challenge government policies, actions, or decisions that they allege reduce the value of their investments... Through ISDS, the federal government gives foreign investors – and foreign investors alone – the ability to bypass th[e] robust, nuanced, and democratically responsive legal framework. Foreign investors are able to frame questions of domestic constitutional and administrative law as treaty claims, and take those claims to a panel of private international arbitrators, circumventing local, state or federal domestic administrative bodies and courts. Freed from fundamental rules of domestic procedural and substantive law that would have otherwise governed their lawsuits against the government, foreign corporations can succeed in lawsuits before ISDS tribunals even when domestic law would have clearly led to the rejection of those companies’ claims. Corporations are even able to re-litigate cases they have already lost in domestic courts. It is ISDS arbitrators, not domestic courts, who are ultimately able to determine the bounds of proper administrative, legislative, and judicial conduct… This system undermines the important roles of our domestic and democratic institutions, threatens domestic sovereignty, and weakens the rule of law.

Senator Warren, who also opposes TPP has argued, "“ISDS allows a small group of ultra-rich investors to extract billions of dollars from taxpayers while they undermine financial, environmental and public health rules across the world.”  I look forward to the upcoming debates to see whether either Trump, who has labeled the proposal the “rape of our country,”  or Clinton, who previously supported the deal, will cite the academics' letter as additional reason to oppose TPP. 

Friend or Foe to Insider Trading Law? Salman v US

The enticing facts of insider trading have me writing about the topic again (see an earlier post here) as the US Supreme Court prepares to hear oral argument in Salman v. US on October 5th.  In Salman, the Supreme Court is asked to draw some careful lines in the questions: what benefit counts and how to prove such a benefit under Dirks v. SEC.  

Recall that in Dirks, the Supreme Court focused the test on whether an insider benefitted—either by trading or by tipping in exchange for a benefit from the person to whom she tipped material nonpublic information. After Dirks, the 10b inquiry is whether the insider breached a duty by conveying the information for the insider’s personal benefit, and whether the tippee knows or at least should know of the breach. The Court explained that even in a case against a tippee who trades "Absent some personal gain [by the insider], there has been no breach of duty to stockholders. And absent a breach by the insider, there is no derivative breach [by the tippee]."

The Salman case highlights a circuit split:  the Second Circuit case United States v. Newman and the Ninth Circuit's ruling in Salman.  In Salman, the question is whether prosecutors had to prove that the brother-in-law, Maher Kara, disclosed nonpublic securities information in exchange for a personal benefit. Is it enough that the insider and the tippee shared a close family relationship or must there be direct evidence as required in Newman?  

The Ninth Circuit framed the benefit requirement inquiry, established in Dirks, as a gift of confidential information to a trading relative or a friend. The prosecution offered direct evidence of nonpublic information as a gift. The Ninth Circuit, and the Government, relied upon this passage in Dirks:

There may be a relationship between the insider and the recipient that suggests a quid pro quo from the latter, or an intention to benefit the particular recipient. The elements of fiduciary duty and exploitation of nonpublic information also exist when an insider makes a gift of confidential information to a trading relative or friend. The tip and trade resemble trading by the insider himself followed by a gift of the profits to the recipient.

The Second Circuit read the Dirks benefit test more narrowly, saying it required “proof of a meaningfully close personal relationship that generates an exchange that is objective, consequential and represents at least a potential gain of a pecuniary or similarly valuable nature.”

So what is the right answer?  The Government lamented the Newman decision as "dramatically limit[ing] the Government’s ability to prosecute some of the most common, culpable, and market-threatening forms of insider trading.” Whereas others (see here) have criticized the Government's position in Newman and the subsequent basis of the Salman ruling as reviving the “parity of information” standard rejected by Supreme Court in both Chiarella and Dirks.  Focusing on friendship and defining it broadly weakens the benefit test advanced in Dirks.

As someone who teaches insider trading and has followed the fascinating case facts for years, I am looking forward to oral argument and see the next step in the evolution of insider trading.  Co-blogger Ann Lipton tee'd up the Salman case in her post earlier this week with her usual whit and charm.

-Anne Tucker 

 

 

Americold & Diversity Jurisdiction

Last spring, in the wake of Justice Scalia's passing, I blogged about Justice Scalia's final business law case: Americold Realty Trust v. ConAgra Ltd. The oral argument signaled that the Court's preference for a formalistic, bright line test that asked whether the entity involved was an unincorporated entity, in which case the citizenship of its members controlled the question of diversity, or whether it was formed as an corporation, in which a different test would apply.  The Supreme Court issued its unanimous (8-0) opinion in March, 2016 holding that the citizenship of an unincorporated entity depends on the citizenship of all of its members. Because Americold was organized as a real estate investment trust under Maryland law, its shareholders are its members and determine (in this case, preclude) diversity jurisdiction.   

S.I. Strong, the Manley O. Hudson Professor of Law at the University of Missouri, has a forthcoming article, Congress and Commercial Trusts: Dealing with Diversity Jurisdiction Post-Americold, forthcoming in Florida Law Review.  The article addresses the corporate constitutional jurisprudential questions of how can and should the Supreme Court treat business entities.  What is the appropriate role of substance and form in business law?  Her article offers a decisive reply:

Commercial trusts are one of the United States’ most important types of business organizations, holding trillions of dollars of assets and operating nationally and internationally as a “mirror image” of the corporation. However, commercial trusts remain underappreciated and undertheorized in comparison to corporations, often as a result of the mistaken perception that commercial trusts are analogous to traditional intergenerational trusts or that corporations reflect the primary or paradigmatic form of business association.

The treatment of commercial trusts reached its nadir in early 2016, when the U.S. Supreme Court held in Americold Realty Trust v. ConAgra Foods, Inc. that the citizenship of a commercial trust should be equated with that of its shareholder-beneficiaries for purposes of diversity jurisdiction. Unfortunately, the sheer number of shareholder-beneficiaries in most commercial trusts (often amounting to hundreds if not thousands of individuals) typically precludes the parties’ ability to establish complete diversity and thus eliminates the possibility of federal jurisdiction over most commercial trust disputes. As a result, virtually all commercial trust disputes will now be heard in state court, despite their complexity, their impact on matters of national public policy and their effect on the domestic and global economies.

Americold will also result in differential treatment of commercial trusts and corporations for purposes of federal jurisdiction, even though courts and commentators have long recognized the functional equivalence of the two types of business associations. Furthermore, as this research shows, there is no theoretical justification for this type of unequal treatment.

This Article therefore suggests, as a normative proposition, that Congress override Americold and provide commercial trusts with access to federal courts in a manner similar to that enjoyed by corporations. This recommendation is the result of a rigorous interdisciplinary analysis of both the jurisprudential and practical problems created by Americold as a matter of trust law, procedural law and the law of incorporated and unincorporated business associations. The Article identifies two possible Congressional responses to Americold, one involving reliance on minimal diversity, as in cases falling under 28 U.S.C. §§1332(d) and 1369, and the other involving a statutory definition of the citizenship of commercial trusts similar to that used for corporations under 28 U.S.C. §1332(c). In so doing, this Article hopes to place commercial trusts and corporations on an equal footing and avoid the numerous negative externalities generated by the Supreme Court’s decision in Americold.

A special thanks to Professor Strong who read the blog's coverage of Americold and shared her scholarship with me.

-Anne Tucker

Judge Merrick Garland Opinions on "Business" Law

Legal commentators and the media have been abuzz with news of President Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.  If there was ever reason to be abuzz, in the world of legal news, this is it.  Try to find a summary of Judge Garland's record in dealing with business law issues, however, and you are met with a silent, dark internet.  Aside from mentions of Judge Garland having taught anti-trust at Harvard there is little discussion of his business jurisprudence.  The D.C. Circuit court hears an administratively heavy caseload, but Judge Garland has been on the bench for nearly 20 years! I set out to uncover his business law barometer.   My initial searches produced  19 opinions that he authored on business law matters, which are mostly securities cases but also include a piercing the corporate veil and contracts claims among others.  While I am no online search wizard and am positive that I have missed some relevant cases, this is what I produced after such wide-net casting as "business law", "corporations", "partnership", "board of directors", "shareholders" etc.  You get the idea, I ran several undeniably broad searches.  The initial case list is provided below, and was generated (along with annotations) through WestLaw.  Please comment if you have relevant cases to add.  I may add commentary on the cases in a future post if there is interest... (and time).

Securities Law Cases 

1. Horning v. S.E.C., 570 F.3d 337 (D.C. Cir. 2009)

SECURITIES REGULATION - Brokers and Dealers. Mid-trial correction of sanction the SEC sought did not deprive broker-dealer firm’s former director of due process.

2. Graham v. S.E.C., 222 F.3d 994 (D.C. Cir. 2000)

SECURITIES REGULATION - Fraud. Registered representative aided and abetted customer’s fraud.

3. Katz v. S.E.C., 647 F.3d 1156 (D.C. Cir. 2011)

SECURITIES REGULATION - Brokers and Dealers. Former registered representation made unsuitable investment recommendations for her customers.

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Strine as Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States?

I haven't seen his name on any of the short lists to replace Justice Scalia, but I would love to see the current Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, Leo Strine, get the nomination.

The benefits of nominating Chief Justice Strine include:

• Promise of an entertaining nomination process. With all that he has said and written, there would be a lot of fodder, but he would be sure to hold his own. 
• A nominee whose wit and writing style could rival Justice Scalia's.
• Diversity. Chief Justice Strine went to Penn for law school, not Harvard or Yale. (Granted, he does teach at Harvard).
• Serious corporate law knowledge, and, at least on this blog, we know the Supreme Court of the United States needs help in this area.
• Extremely bright, curious, and widely read. He likely has knowledge of and an opinion on most areas of law, well outside of just corporate law.

Anyway, I am sure President Obama will go with a more conventional pick, but I do hope to see a Supreme Court justice with corporate law expertise on the court eventually.

Justice Scalia's Final Mark on Corporate Law May Be One of Form over Substance

Justice Scalia’s sudden passing has generated a tidal wave of media and academic attention on the future of the Supreme Court.   As a corporate law scholar, I have to admit to a tinge of jealousy to be seemingly outside of this controversy, the hand wringing, and the political equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons that has ensued as people examine the various maneuverers available to our elected politicians and those vying-to be elected.

My solution? I searched for pending corporate cases hanging in the balance of the new, and indeterminate, vacancy on the Supreme Court.  I wanted to know if there were any cases pending  that would likely be decided differently in a post-Scalia court, or at least hang in a 4-4 split and thus uphold the lower court ruling.  There isn’t a big juicy corporate law case pending, or at least one that I readily identified.

Not to be deterred, however, there is a case worth highlighting. Americold Realty Trust v. ConAgra Foods, Inc., was argued on January 19^th before the Supreme Court (transcript available here).  The issue before the Supreme Court in Americold was how to establish the citizenship of a real estate trust for purposes of diversity citizenship.  Is the trust's citizenship dependent upon the citizenship of the controlling trustees (as argued by Americold)?  Or is it dependent upon the citizenship of the trust beneficiaries (argued by ConAgra Foods), or some combination? Locating citizenship with trustees narrows the potential states and ensures diversity citizenship whereas citizenship with the beneficiaries, of which there are thousands, implicates most states and thus frustrates federal jurisdiction.

At the heart of the oral argument was the 1990 ruling Carden v. Arkoma Associates, which established a bright line between the citizenship of corporations (located in the state of incorporation) and the citizenship of all other artificial business entities (located in the states of the beneficial owners of the business). 

In Carden, the Supreme Court wrote:

In 1958 it revised the rule established in Letson, providing that a corporation shall be deemed a citizen not only of its State of incorporation but also "of the State where it has its principal place of business." 28 U.S.C. 1332(c). No provision was made for the treatment of artificial entities other than corporations, although the existence of many new, post-Letson forms of commercial enterprises, including at least the sort of joint stock company ..., the sort of limited partnership association ..., and the sort of Massachusetts business trust ... We have long since decided that, having established special treatment for corporations, we will leave the rest to Congress; we adhere to that decision. 

Drawing on the Carden precedent, the question became whether the REIT as issue in Americold was organized as a traditional corporation or not. 

Ronald Mann writing for the SCOTUS Blog summarized Justice Scalia’s role in oral argument on this issue with the following:

Justice Antonin Scalia early on asked, “[w]ho owns these assets under Maryland law? Is it . . . this new corporation-type entity? That’s the entity that can sue.” That conclusion led him to dismiss out of hand Americold’s contention that the citizenship of the trust managers should be decisive: “[T]he trustees are sort of in the position of managers, just as though you hired a CEO.”

Scalia's skepticism about the REIT functioning like a corporation was shared by the other Justices despite the fact that modern REITs, in many ways, resemble corporations more so than other unincorporated business entities.  REITs have dispersed and diffused shareholders, often with shares traded on public exchanges.  This position was articulated by an amicus brief filed by National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT).  The Justices however signaled a truly formalistic approach asking if the entity was indeed formed as a corporation (not did it function as one or was it capitalized as one). Only if so would the state of incorporation rule prevail.

A Justice Scalia-influenced Supreme Court's last word on corporate jurisprudence may very likely be one of pure form over substance.  Merely asking which entity form was used without looking at the distinguishing features of a corporation and the justifications for why corporations were treated differently beginning in 1958 produces a corporate law legacy of flimsy jurisprudence. Failing to take into account the market realities and relying upon strict categorical distinctions without reference to function would create a bright line, but not necessarily a bright result.

-Anne Tucker

Death of the Firm: Vulnerabilities and the Changing Structure of Employment

On Saturday, January 9, 2016, I will be spending the day at the AALS Section on Socio-Economics Annual Meeting at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel.  Among other things, I will be part of a panel discussion from 9:50 - 10:50 AM, Death of the Firm: Vulnerabilities and the Changing Structure of Employment.  My co-panelists will be June Carbone and Katherine Stone (I am very tempted to give up my 15 minutes and just sit back and listen to these two great scholars, but please don't use the comments section to encourage me to do that).  As I understand it, the gist of the discussion will be that while firms once supported a significant part of the safety net that provided employee health and retirement benefits, they have recently abdicated more and more of these responsibilities.  At the same time, however, what may be described as subsidies granted by the state to firms -- particularly corporations -- as part of a social contract whereby these firms provided the aforementioned benefits, have not been correspondingly reduced.  In fact, the rights of corporations have been expanded by, for example, cases like Citizens United and Hobby Lobby -- suggesting a possible windfall for the minority of individuals best positioned to reap the benefits of corporate growth and insulation.  Obviously, competing interpretations of the relevant history abound.  Regardless, please stop by if you have the opportunity.  Continuing to beat a favorite drum of mine (see here, here, and here), I will be applying the lens of corporate personality theory to the foregoing issue and arguing that corporate personality theory has a role to play both in understanding how we got here and how best to move forward.  Additional details, including the entire day’s program, can be found here.

On Monday, January 11, 2016, I will also be participating in the Society of Socio-Economists Annual Meeting, also at the Sheraton. Program details are available here. Again, please stop by if you have the opportunity.

Have progressives flipped on corporate governance?

Kent Greenfield, Professor of Law and Dean’s Research Scholar at Boston College Law School, recently posted a provocative piece on the CLS Blue Sky Blog (here) in which he argues, among other things, that progressives have “flipped” from supporting “corporate citizenship” pre-Citizens United, to supporting “shareholder primacy” post-Citizens United.  (Kent has stressed to me that he does not believe this characterization extends to progressive corporate law scholars.) The piece is short, so I recommend you go read it before continuing on to my comments below, because I will simply be taking some short excerpts from his post and providing some responses, which will likely benefit from the reader having reviewed Kent’s post first. As just one disclaimer, Kent’s post is based on his article, “Corporate Citizenship: Goal or Fear?” – and I have not yet read that paper. Also, I consider the following to be very much an in-progress, thinking-out-loud type of project, and thus welcome all comments.

1. In 2010, the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, ruling that corporations had a First Amendment right to spend money from general treasury funds in support of political candidates. Though seen as victory for political conservatives, the decision was in some ways based on a progressive view of the corporation. In the Court’s reasoning, corporations act as “associations of citizens” with rights of free speech.

Kent argues that the historical divide between progressives and conservatives can be viewed as one of “shareholder primacy” versus “corporate citizenship,” with progressives advocating for corporate citizenship while conservatives advance the cause of shareholder primacy. A couple of caveats are in order here. First, we must distinguish “shareholder primacy” as an assertion that shareholders should have the dominant (or at least more) controlling power within the corporation, from “shareholder wealth maximization,” which posits that the goal of corporate control is shareholder wealth maximization, independent of where the decision-making power resides. Second, we should keep in mind the competing corporate personality theories: aggregate theory, artificial entity (concession) theory, and real entity theory. I have argued in the past (see, e.g., here) that both aggregate theory and real entity theory tend to view the corporation as more private than public, with aggregate theory equating the relevant “association of citizens” with shareholders, while real entity theory looks to the board of directors – in either case positing a group of natural persons who can assert constitutional rights against government regulation. Artificial entity theory, on the other hand, views corporations as more public, at least in part because it is essentially impossible to mimic the corporate form solely through private contracting, and thus the state is entitled to more leeway in regulating corporations than natural persons acting in their purely private capacity. In light of all this, it may be better to view progressives as opposing shareholder wealth maximization as the sole goal of corporate governance, while being flexible as to the means used to achieve that end – be it shareholder primacy, director primacy, or “state primacy.” (I am not suggesting that a shift to shareholder primacy as the favored means of achieving the ends of progressive corporate governance is insignificant. Rather, I argue merely that a shift in means is less dramatic than a shift in ends, and thus less appropriately characterized as an ideological flip.) To the extent Citizens United is viewed as having merely strengthened the associational, private view of corporations without challenging the shareholder wealth maximization norm – it is hard to view it as advancing a progressive view of the corporation. In fact, it arguably stands simply as an opinion that gives more political power to corporations to pursue shareholder wealth maximization (or for managers to use shareholder wealth maximization as a justification for self-dealing) at the expense of other stakeholder concerns.

2. The biggest impediment to using the Citizens United moment to change corporate governance for the better is the progressive left.

In light of my comments above, I think there is a stronger argument to be made that the biggest impediment to changing corporate governance for the better is the continuing identification of corporations as purely private entities. It has been said that the greatest trick the devil played was convincing the world he didn’t exist. In this context, we might say the greatest trick played on progressives was convincing them their only viable choices are contractarian.

3. Justice John Paul Stevens’s dissent in Citizens United …. (perhaps unwittingly) bolsters shareholder supremacy by arguing that corporate speech should be limited in order to protect shareholders’ investments.

It may be better to view this part of Justice Stevens’s dissent as challenging the majority’s view that opening the corporate political contribution floodgates is not problematic because “corporate democracy” will address any problems. Meanwhile, Justice Stevens quotes Dartmouth College approvingly, and states that “corporations have been ‘effectively delegated responsibility for ensuring society's economic welfare,’” both of which place him squarely in the concession theory camp – despite his protestations to the contrary.

4. The irony runs the other way as well. In the 2014 Hobby Lobby case, the Court granted corporations the statutory right under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to object to otherwise applicable regulations on religious grounds. Writing for the Court, Justice Samuel Alito recognized that corporations need not maximize the bottom line ….

Go here for my take on whether Hobby Lobby changed anything in terms of the ability of those who control corporations to pursue “socially responsible” ends.  It is worth noting that a corporation’s ability to pursue “socially responsible” ends as part of an overall shareholder-wealth-maximizing strategy in light of the business judgement rule is not necessarily the same thing as concluding corporations will pursue some optimal level of “corporate citizenship,” which may rather require recognizing state power to require such activity or prohibit related harmful activity.

5. The world is flipped. Progressives are championing shareholder rights. Conservatives are planting their ideological flag on the summit of corporate citizenship.

As noted above, to the extent one views progressives as seeking more corporate social responsibility, and being willing to consider alternative methods to that end – be it shareholder primacy, director primacy, or state primacy – I do not see a significant flip here. Meanwhile, to the extent conservatives can be viewed as having supported shareholder wealth maximization as the optimal, but not sole, means to the end of lifting all ships via a rising tide, in addition to being consistently united against government regulation, there is also arguably nothing here that constitutes a significant “flip.”

Of course, generalities like “progressive” and “conservative” typically suffer from significant amounts of imprecision, and it may be that the “flip” characterization is more or less appropriate given the strand of progressive or conservative one is considering.

Issue Highlight: A Jury Not the SEC

Home court advantage alleged in SEC securities cases brought before administrative judges rather than a jury.  Read this recent thought provoking article in the NYT DealB%k, A Jury Not the SEC, by Suja A. Thomas, a Univ. of Illinois law professor, and Mark Cuban, billionaire investor.  

After losing several cases before juries, the S.E.C. went to a place where it generally cannot lose: itself. When it accuses a person of a securities violation, the S.E.C. has often brought the case in an administrative hearing where one of its own judges decides the case, not a jury. Rarely does the agency lose such cases before its judges

Thomas and Cuban refute the argument that after the financial crisis securities issues are considered public rights questions and can constitutionally be transferred to an administrative judge. 

Despite the persistence of this public rights doctrine, there is no constitutional authority for it. First, Article I does not give Congress any authority to determine who decides civil cases. Second, the Seventh Amendment itself tells us who should decide these cases. Under it, juries decide money issues and federal judges decide other matters.

-Anne Tucker

Has President Obama helped or hurt American business? Ten questions

Love him or hate him, you can’t deny that President Obama has had an impact on this country. Tomorrow, I will be a panelist on the local public affairs show for the PBS affiliate to talk about the President’s accomplishments and/or failings. The producer asked the panelists to consider this article as a jumping off point. One of the panelists worked for the Obama campaign and another worked for Jeb Bush. Both are practicing lawyers. The other panelist is an educator and sustainability expert. And then there’s me.

I’ve been struggling all week with how to articulate my views because there’s a lot to discuss about this “lame duck” president. Full disclosure—I went to law school with Barack Obama. I was class of ’92 and he was class of ’91 but we weren’t close friends. I was too busy doing sit-ins outside of the dean’s house as a radical protester railing against the lack of women and minority faculty members. Barack Obama did his part for the movement to support departing Professor Derrick Bell by speaking (at minute 6:31) at one of the protests. I remember thinking then and during other times when Barack spoke publicly that he would run for higher office. At the time a black man being elected to the president of the Harvard Law Review actually made national news. I, like many students of all races, really respected that accomplishment particularly in light of the significant racial tensions on campus during our tenure.

During my stint in corporate America, I was responsible for our company’s political action committee. I still get more literature from Republican candidates than from any other due to my attendance at so many fundraisers. I met with members of Congress and the SEC on more than one occasion to discuss how a given piece of legislation could affect my company and our thousands of business customers. My background gives me what I hope will be a more balanced set of talking points than some of the other panelists. In addition to my thoughts about civil rights, gay marriage, gun control, immigration reform, Guantanamo, etc., I will be thinking of the following business-related points for tomorrow’s show: 

1) Was the trade deal good or bad for American workers, businesses and/or those in the affected countries? A number of people have had concerns about human rights and IP issues that weren’t widely discussed in the popular press.

2) Dodd-Frank turns five next week. What did it accomplish? Did it go too far in some ways and not far enough in others? Lawmakers announced today that they are working on some fixes. Meanwhile, much of the bill hasn’t even been implemented yet. Will we face another financial crisis before the ink is dried on the final piece of implementing legislation? Should more people have gone to jail as a result of the last two financial crises?

3) Did the President waste his political capital by starting off with health care reform instead of focusing on jobs and infrastructure?

4) Did the President’s early rhetoric against the business community make it more difficult for him to get things done?

5) How will the changes in minimum wage for federal contractors and the proposed changes to the white collar exemptions under the FLSA affect job growth? Will relief in income inequality mean more consumers for the housing, auto and consumer goods markets? Or has too little been done?

6) Has the President done enough or too much as it relates to climate change? The business groups and environmentalists have very differing views on scope and constitutionality.

7) What will the lifting of sanctions on Cuba and Iran mean for business? Both countries were sworn mortal enemies and may now become trading partners unless Congress stands in the way.

8) Do we have the right people looking after the financial system? Is there too much  regulatory capture? Has the President tried to change it or has he perpetuated the status quo?

9) What kind of Supreme Court nominee will he pick if he has the chance? The Roberts court has been helpful to him thus far. If he gets a pick it could affect business cases for a generation.

10) Although many complain that he has overused his executive order authority, is there more that he should do? 

I don’t know if I will have answers to these questions by tomorrow but I certainly have a lot to think about before I go on air. If you have any thoughts before 8:30 am, please post below or feel free to email me privately at [email protected].