Private Law Theory

ABSTRACT
There are many lessons to be drawn from the sweep of history. In law, the compelling story repeatedly told is the observable co-movement of law on the one hand, and economic, social, and political changes on the other hand. Aberrations, however, do arise but generally do not persist in the long term. Contemporary corporate law seems to be on the cusp of such an abnormality as legal developments and proposed reforms for corporate law are currently conflicting with the direction in which the host environment is moving. This article identifies a series of contemporary judicial and regulatory corporate governance developments that are at odds with multiple forces unleashed by today’s ownership of public companies being highly concentrated in the hands of various types of financial institutions. In particular, we focus on the appropriateness of recent regulatory impediments that have been placed in the path of the continuing evolution of the monitoring board of directors but with an eye to the past, as well as how developments over the last several decades complete the central feature of modern corporate governance, the monitoring model …

James D Cox and Randall S Thomas, A Revised Monitoring Model Confronts Today’s Movement Toward Managerialism, 99 Texas Law Review 1275-1307 (2021).

First posted 2021-10-13 09:00:14