Law and finance scholars have long found corporate law largely irrelevant for startups and venture capital (VC)because founders and investors often “contract around” mandatory rules. Yet this finding conflicts with persistent empirical patterns. Most VC-backed startups in the United …

For over a century, Delaware’s dominance in corporate law has been credited to an expert judiciary, deep case law, a specialized bar, a responsive legislature, and relative insulation from interest-group politics. Recent legislative and jurisprudential events, however, have caused observers …

Venture capital contracting is the function of a complex private-ordering exercise through which venture capitalists and entrepreneurs address the challenges of financing high-tech firms (Kaplan & Strömberg, 2004). Throughout decades of iterative practice, U.S. venture capital contracts have …

Venture capital (VC) is a key driver of economic growth. A substantial body of legal and financial scholarship has examined the institutional factors that shape VC activity. In the first of two papers, we build on the idea that the …

In the debate over introducing ideas from environmental and sustainability regulation to corporate law, one major issue has been largely missing: discounting frameworks. Discounting is important for evaluating the future benefits of investment today and is used by both social …

As I write this from the Tulane Corporate Law Institute’s annual conference in New Orleans, the energy is palpable. While Mardi Gras revelers have vacated the streets, they’ve been replaced by a different phalanx of uncharacteristically confrontational carousers: corporate law …

Over the past few decades, corporate law scholarship has largely relied on insights from the nexus-of-contracts theory of the firm, agency-theoretic reasoning in corporate finance, and the economic analysis of law more generally. These insights have led to substantial theoretical …

It is well-known that equity is a central part of corporate law, and courts do not hesitate to remind litigants of that fact. Yet, a fuller appreciation of what equity means for corporate law is still lacking. In a recent …

Can we speak of a “purpose” for corporations or, more broadly, corporate law?  The doctrine of shareholder primacy has long had an easy answer: Both individual corporations and corporate law should strive to maximize shareholder wealth.  But this reductive and …

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) can help cause but also solve the climate crisis. A lot depends on the controlling shareholders of SOEs – governments – which wield significant legal and economic power over SOEs’ actions. If we are serious about holding …

Corporate law – and judicial application of that law – considers two facets of a transaction: (1) whether a corporation’s management used processes that are fair to stockholders to reach its decision (“process”), and (2) whether the economic results of …

The world of startups often appears to embody the exceptionalism of modern finance, with funds swiftly flowing to the best teams and ideas wherever they may emerge. The reality, however, is much more complicated. Financing startups remains a daunting challenge …

In a forthcoming chapter, we explore the duality of corporate purpose, which reflects two sides of corporate law and governance. First, because each corporation must specify a purpose in its charter, corporate purpose can be understood at the level of …

How do the corporate laws of Global South jurisdictions differ from their Global North counterparts? Prevailing stereotypes depict the corporate laws of developing countries as either antiquated, mere copies of Global North models or plagued by problems of enforcement. While …

Large firms today are rarely organized as a single legal entity, but rather as corporate groups with numerous subsidiaries that have separate legal personalities. A debate has long raged over how to treat the legal boundaries between companies belonging to …

Corporate law – and fiduciary law in general – has struggled with how to handle loyalty duties that are harmful to society.  For example, a director’s act of loyalty to shareholders that harms the environment, or a director’s effort to …

What makes the corporate laws of some jurisdictions more attractive for entrepreneurs and investors than others in the global arena? Within the United States, the competition among state laws is a popular explanation for Delaware’s corporate law prominence. However, interjurisdictional …

In September 2021, the Boeing 737 Max debacle turned into an important moment in corporate law. A Delaware court allowed a derivative lawsuit brought by Boeing shareholders to proceed, based on the theory that Boeing’s directors breached their oversight duties …

When should directors be held liable for their company’s distressed financial condition? In a recent article, we show that the answer varies widely across legal regimes. We focus on the zone of insolvency, a phase in the company’s life …