Cornell Law Review

Cornell Law Review is proud to announce Vol. 106, Issue 1. Thank you to our amazing authors for their outstanding collaboration and patience with us during the COVID-19 pandemic. Please see below for a complete list of Vol. 106, Issue 1 authors and their scholarship.

Articles

The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance

Lucian A. Bebchuk, James Barr Ames Professor of Law, Economics, and Finance, and Director of the Program on Corporate Governance, Harvard Law School

Roberto Tallarita, Terence M. Considine Senior Fellow in Law and Economics, and Associate Director of the Program on Corporate Governance, Harvard Law School

To address growing concerns about the negative effects of corporations on their stakeholders, supporters of stakeholder governance (“stakeholderism”) advocate a governance model that encourages and relies on corporate leaders to serve the interests of stakeholders and not only those of shareholders. We conduct a conceptual, economic, and empirical analysis of stakeholderism and its expected consequences. Stakeholderism, we conclude, is an inadequate and substantially counterproductive approach to addressing stakeholder concerns. 

Bad Money

Dan Awrey, Professor of Law, Cornell Law School; Research Member, European Corporate Governance Institute.

This Article represents the first comprehensive examination of the antiquated patchwork of state regulatory frameworks that currently, or might soon, govern these new institutions. It finds that these frameworks are characterized by significant heterogeneity and often fail to meaningfully enhance the credibility of the promises that these institutions make to the holders of their monetary liabilities. Put bluntly: these institutions are issuing bad money. This Article therefore proposes a National Money Act designed to strengthen and harmonize the regulatory frameworks governing these new institutions and promote a more level competitive playing field.

Automated Legal Guidance

Joshua D. Blank, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of Strategic Initiatives, University of California, Irvine School of Law

Leigh Osofsky, Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law

This Article offers one of the first critiques of these new systems of artificial intelligence. It shows that automated legal guidance currently relies upon the concept of “simplexity,” whereby complex law is presented as though it is simple, without actually engaging in simplification of the underlying law. While this approach offers potential gains in terms of efficiency and ease of use, it also causes the government to present the law as simpler than it is, leading to less precise advice and potentially inaccurate legal positions. Using the Interactive Tax Assistant as a case study, the Article shows that the use of simplexity in automated legal guidance is more powerful and pervasive than in static publications because it is personalized, non-qualified, and instantaneous. Further, it argues that understanding the costs as well as the benefits of current forms of automated legal guidance is essential to evaluating even more sophisticated, but also more opaque, automated systems that governments are likely to adopt in the future.

Notes

Venue Above the Clouds: Prosecuting In-Flight Crimes By Creating A “High Skies” Law

Philip J. Duggan, B.A., St. Lawrence University, 2015

The debate about how to determine a proper venue exemplifies this shifting legal landscape. Recently, statutory and constitutional questions of venue have divided courts and sewn uncertainty as to where defendants charged with in-flight crimes can face justice. This Note calls upon Congress to revise a well-known statute in order to fix the escalating problem of in-flight venue and bring this aspect of criminal procedure into the twenty-first century.

Disparate Defense in Tribal Courts: The Unequal Rights to Counsel as a Barrier to Expansion of Tribal Court Criminal Jurisdiction

Samuel Macomber, J.D., Cornell Law School, 2020

This Note argues that modifying the right to counsel for Indians will help expand tribal court criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians. Fixing the discrepancy in representation between Bryant and Jaimez may increase U.S. Congress’s faith in tribal courts and thus encourage Congress to extend tribal jurisdiction over more non-Indian offenders. This Note arises from a deeply held belief in both the rights of the accused as presumptively innocent and the rights of tribes as sovereign nations.