Independent directors are an important feature of modern corporate law. Courts and lawmakers around the world increasingly rely on these directors to protect investors from controlling shareholder opportunism. In this Article, we argue that the existing director-election regime significantly...

This Article examines the large, steady, and continuing growth of the Big Three index fund managers — BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Global Advisors. We show that there is a real prospect that index funds will continue to grow, and that voting in most significant public companies will...

An important milestone often reached in the life of an activist engagement is entering into a “settlement” agreement between the activist and the target's board. Using a comprehensive hand-collected data set, we analyze the drivers, nature, and consequences of such settlement agreements....

This Article examines two “meta” issues raised by opponents of the SEC's proposal to provide shareholders with rights to place director candidates on the company's proxy materials. First, opponents argue that, even assuming proxy access is desirable in many circumstances, the existing...

During contractual negotiation, parties often make (reliance) expenditures that would increase the surplus should a contract be made. This paper analyzes decisions to invest in pre-contractual reliance under alternative legal regimes. Investments in reliance will be socially suboptimal in the...

This paper shows that "one-sided" terms in standard contracts, which deny consumers a contractual benefit that seems efficient on average, may arise in competitive markets without informational problems (other than those of courts). A one-sided term might be an efficient response to situations...

The correlation between governance indices and abnormal returns documented for 1990–1999 subsequently disappeared. The correlation and its disappearance are both due to market participants' gradually learning to appreciate the difference between good-governance and poor-governance firms....

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is currently considering a rulemaking petition requesting that the SEC develop rules requiring that public companies disclose their spending on politics. The petition, which was submitted by a committee of ten corporate law professors that we...

This note offers an initial response to a study released earlier this month by Martijn Cremers and Simone Sepe, “Board Declassification Activism: The Financial Value of the Shareholder Rights Project.” Putting aside methodological questions about their analysis and accepting their results...