Cornell Law Review

Cornell Law Review Online

Racial Reckoning With Economic Inequities

Lisa M. Fairfax,  Alexander Hamilton Professor of Business Law, George Washington University School of Law

In response to the racial reckoning sparked by the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other unarmed Black men and women during the summer of 2020, many corporations publicly expressed their commitment to not only grapple with racial inequities in the economic sphere, but also increase racial diversity on their board, with particular…

Feb 2022

Cornell Law Review Online

Toward a Law and Politics of Racial Solidarity

Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Class of 1950 Herman B. Wells Endowed Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law

Guy-Uriel Charles, Edward & Ellen Schwarzman Professor of Law, Co-Director, Center on Law, Race, and Politics, Duke Law School

The killings of George Floyd, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and others have occurred under different factual circumstances, in different states, at the hands of both state and private actors, and have engendered different levels of outrage on the basis of their perceived egregiousness. Collectively and cumulatively, they have forced Americans to, once again, wrestle with…

Feb 2022

The Inevitability and Desirability of the Corporate Discretion to Advance Stakeholder Interests

Einer Elhauge, Petrie Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

In The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance, Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita offer a vigorous defense of the view that corporate leaders should have a legal duty to maximize only shareholder value.11. Lucian A. Bebchuk & Roberto Tallarita, The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance, 106 CORNELL L. REV. 91 (2020). They define “corporate leaders” as…

Feb 2022

Shareholderism Versus Stakeholderism–A Misconceived Contradiction

Colin Mayer, Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

This Essay critiques an assessment by Lucian Bebchuk and Roberto Tallarita of the relative merits of shareholder and stakeholder governance. In “The Illusory Promise of Stakeholder Governance,” Bebchuk and Tallarita argue that stakeholder governance is either nothing more than enlightened shareholder value, or it imposes unmanageable trade-offs on directors of companies. But trade-offs are ubiquitous…

Feb 2022

On the Promise of Stakeholder Governance: A Response to Bebchuk and Tallarita

William Savitt, Partner, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz

Aneil Kovvali, Harry A. Bigelow Teaching Fellow & Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago Law School

Professor Bebchuk and his coauthor Roberto Tallarita have launched a broadside against recent efforts of business leaders, scholars, and lawyers to promote a corporate governance model that permits directors to take into account interests other than stockholders—a governance regime that authorizes directors to manage their corporations having in mind the interests not of stockholders alone,…

Feb 2022

Cornell Law Review Online

Mitigating the PSLF Disaster: Building a Borrower-Friendly Student Loan Forgiveness Program

Michael Slomovics, J.D., Yale Law School, 2021

In 2007, Congress promised student loan forgiveness to our teachers, public defenders, nurses, and other public servants. The bargain was simple: spend ten years in public service and your debt will be eliminated. Unfortunately for borrowers, the program turned out to be a disaster, with loan forgiveness denial rates as high as 99%. Individuals frequently…

Nov 2021

Cornell Law Review Online

Do Reason-Based Abortion Bans Prevent Eugenics?

Sital Kalantry, Associate Professor of Law, Seattle University School of Law

This Essay discusses a lesser‑known case through which Roe v. Wade could be gutted—by declaring reason‑based bans constitutional.  If the Court finds that one reason‑based abortion ban is constitutionally permissible, it will open the door for states to destroy the fundamental right to abortion by enacting many more reasons for why abortion is impermissible.

Oct 2021

Protecting Pregnancy

Jennifer Bennett Shinall, Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School

Laws to assist pregnant women in the workplace are gaining legislative momentum, both at the state and federal levels. Last year alone, four such laws went into effect at the state level, and federal legislation advanced farther than ever before in the House of Representatives. Four types of legislative protections for pregnant workers currently exist—pregnancy…

Aug 2021

Article

Chevron as Construction

Lawrence B. Solum, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University

In 1984, the Supreme Court declared that courts should uphold agency interpretations of ambiguous statutory provisions, so long as those interpretations are reasonable. The Chevron framework, as it is called, is now under serious pressure. Current debates can be both illuminated and softened with reference to an old distinction between interpretation on the one hand…

Jul 2020

Article

Legitimate Interpretation—Or Legitimate Adjudication

Thomas W. Merrill, Charles Evans Hughes Professor, Columbia Law School

Current debate about the legitimacy of lawmaking by courts focuses on what constitutes legitimate interpretation. The debate has reached an impasse in that originalism and textualism appear to have the stronger case as a matter of theory while living constitutionalism and dynamic interpretation provide much better account of actual practice. This Article argues that if…

Jul 2020