Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Another term of the U.S. Supreme Court has come and gone and, as is usually the case, I will say something about it in this blog. This is the first of four posts devoted to that end. I'm not going to have anything to say about the abortion case that came down on the final day of the term. It is politically consequential, but there isn't a lot to be said about it from a legal point of view except that it is a re-affirmation of what has been the law since Casey . And I've just said that. I'm also not going to discuss the public corruption case the Court decided on the last day of its session, effectively granting Robert McDonnell a new trial. It does involve an intellectually interesting issue of statutory interpretation, and it may be said to involve a deserved rebuke to prosecutorial overreach, but I find the blatancy of the cronyism involved there too depressing, wish to avoid slitting my wrists today. What's left? A heck of a lot. I'll start in a way t...

In June 2006 the Supreme Court of the State of Delaware handed down a decision on the duties that members of a board of directors owe to the stockholders. Because of the high-profile boardroom fighting behind the decision, and of course the famous name of the company, this decision is better known than are many equally-important corporate and securities law decisions: Yet  In re Walt Disney Co. Derivative Litigation has a good deal of significance even aside from all that. A major New York corporate-law firm, Wachtell Lipton , recently mailed its various corporate clients a "Compensation Committee Guide," explaining how they can determine the salaries, perqs, etc., of their Big Shot executives with minimal litigation blowback. It intrigues me that in a 2013 pamphlet prepared for this purpose, a 7-year-old Disney case, something that happened before the great financial crisis, before Dodd-Frank, before the recent say-on-pay litigation, still has to be given and is giv...

The year 1990 in business and finance. Big Picture: the two Germanies formally re-united, the Soviet Union tottered toward its end, Bush reached an agreement with Congress that raised taxes, despite his lip-reading pledge, and Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady was still at work implementing an ambitious plan hatched the previous year to retire unpayable debts by undeveloped countries, i.e. the Brady Bonds plan. Little Pictures: The following items may all have seemed mere details, but it is my contention that each imply important stories, and these small-picture stories help us understand why we are where we are even today.  But I'll make no effort to explain the significance of each as mentioned. January: Time Inc. merges with Warner Communications to become Time Warner February: The US Supreme Court decides REVES v. ERNST & YOUNG, struggling with the question of what is a "security" for reg purposes. March: FASB issues a pronoucnement on the discl...