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Women in Shareholder Activism
Get PDFEven a cursory review of the history of American environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) shareholder activism reveals the presence of women leaders. This Article sketches some of this history and interrogates the role of women in the shareholder activism movement. That movement typically has involved claims by minority shareholders to corporate power; activists are nearly always on the margins of power, though minority shareholders may, collectively, represent a majority interest. This Article ascribes women’s leadership in shareholder activism to their longstanding position as outsiders to corporate organization. Women’s participation in shaping corporate policy—even from the margins—has provided women with unique opportunities for leadership and challenged stereotypes about the role of women in public life, while also challenging and reforming business practices and policies.
Much of this Article sketches the history of American women in shareholder activism, beginning in the 1890s with Ellen M. Henrotin, perhaps the first person to recognize the potential for collective action among women shareholders. This Article describes the ESG activism of Louise de Koven Bown, another Chicago socialite, and explores the rise of women activists after World War II, led by Wilma Soss, who pursued a mix of social and governance reforms and even achieved some fame in popular culture. Unlike their male counterparts, such as Lewis Gilbert, women activists were savaged by the press. This Article describes the role of women shareholder activists after the emergence of institutional investing, from the Sisters of the Precious Blood, a group of nuns who waged a shareholder activism campaign against the manufacturers of infant formula, to the Corporate Social Responsibility movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the leadership of such women as Alice Tepper Marlin, Joan Bavaria, Amy Domini, and Nell Minow. Finally, this Article describes the experience of a twenty-first century asset manager who ran into sexism in the shareholder-manager dynamic and exposed it in the Financial Times in 2018. This Article concludes by summing up some key insights from this history
“I’ll Have the Fish, Please” – Why Wild, Sustainable Fisheries in the United States Need Permanent Federal Protection, and Fast
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Reclaiming Sacred Homelands: Asserting Treaty Rights and the Path Towards Restoration of the Badger-Two Medicine
Get PDF“In order for law to have an influence in the lives of ordinary people, it must have something to do with the emotional feelings of justice, it must speak to our basic humanity, and it must give us common sense directions as to what behavior and beliefs are right and wron
A New Cobell: The Need for a Continued Buy-Back Program
Get PDFThe General Allotment Act of 1887 divided Indian reservations into smaller plots for the supposed benefit of individual Indians. Today, these allotments are severely fractionated, with some 160-acre plots having as many as a thousand owners. Since allotment, Congress has repeatedly attempted to solve this problem. However, only the Cobell Land Buy-Back Program has made any sizeable impact on fractionation levels. This paper examines the fractionation problem and the Cobell Program. Now that the Cobell Program has ended in November 2022, this paper argues that Congress must quickly reauthorize a similar program or fractionation will soon exceed pre-Cobell levels
Politics and the Criminal Enforcement of The Toxic Substances Control Act
Get PDFEnvironmental crimes related to chemical substances are governed under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). When these violations involve significant harm or culpable conduct they may be remedied through criminal prosecution. While Democratic and Republican presidents have offered historically varied support for criminal enforcement, we know very little about how politics affects TSCA enforcement outcomes or TSCA criminal enforcement generally. To address these issues, we performed a content analysis of 2,728 criminal prosecutions from 1983-2021 that derive from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) criminal investigations and select all TSCA prosecutions. Results show 75 prosecutions were adjudicated, involving 137 defendants who were assessed 161 years in prison, 277 years of probation and directed to pay over $170 million in monetary penalties. Prosecutions and penalties trend upward for Republican presidents, but the stronger trend is one of structural disinvestment in criminal enforcement over decades spanning both political parties
Suicide-Related Behavior and Firearms Access among Perpetrators of Domestic Violence Subject to Domestic Violence Protection Orders
No full textPerpetrators of domestic violence (DV) may be a population at elevated risk of suicide. Domestic violence protection orders (DVPOs) can include the removal of firearms from the individual subjected to the order (i.e., the respondent) to protect the victim-survivor. While removal of firearms in a DVPO is designed to protect the victim-survivor; it may also prevent suicide of the respondent by reducing access to lethal means. Therefore, we examined the association of respondent suicide-related behaviors with firearm possession and weapon use in DV among a sample of granted DVPO petitions in King County, Washington (WA), United States from 2014 to 2020 (n = 2,537). We compared prevalence ratios (PR) of respondent firearm possession and use of firearms or weapons to threaten or harm by suicide-related behavior. Overall, respondent suicide-related behavior was commonly reported by petitioners (46 %). Approximately 30 % of respondents possessed firearms. This was similar between respondents with and without a history of suicide-related behavior (PR: 1.03; 95 % CI: 0.91-1.17). Respondents with a history of suicide-related behavior were 1.33 times more likely to have used firearms or weapons to threaten/harm in DV compared to those without a history of suicide-related behavior (44.1 % vs. 33.8 %; 95 % CI: 1.20-1.47). In conclusion, both firearm possession and suicide-related behaviors were common among DVPO respondents. History of suicide-related behavior may be a marker for firearm-related harm to the victim-survivor. Evaluations of DVPO firearm dispossession should consider both firearm-related injury of the victim-survivor and suicide of the respondent
Racial Justice and Marijuana
Get PDFCurrent legalization approaches for recreational marijuana fall short of performing and delivering racial justice as measured by materiality and outcomes rather than promises of formal legal equality. As a small first step for unwinding the War on Drugs, this Article considers how legalizing recreational marijuana can help move law and society toward true racial justice, measured by material and actual outcomes for systemically subordinated groups. In the same way that criminalization of marijuana was one of the tools for racial control, legalization of marijuana can be a revenue-based tool toward an anti-subordination future of material equality. While recognizing the shortcomings of reparations initiatives to deliver equality, this Article explores and details how reparations from tax revenue can begin to confront longstanding racial damage. It concludes that reparation initiatives must be race conscious rather than colorblind. The War on Drugs was, and is still, being disproportionately waged against people of color. As such, measures to confront the damage must be race conscious too
Discovery Dark Matter
No full textDiscovery disputes are prevalent in pretrial practice but are largely absentfrom law-school casebooks and the decisions of the Supreme Court. The lack offormal appellate decisions contributes to the view that discovery functions likecivil litigation’s Wild West, without meaningful law development or errorcorrection. But, by looking at every reference to “discovery” in the RobertsCourt’s jurisprudence and hundreds of district courts’ review of magistratejudges’ discovery orders, this Article identifies how this story leaves out a fewcritical developments.
First, focusing on the lack of formal appellate decisions misses howdiscovery is actually extensively featured in the Roberts Court’s decisions. Forexample, Twombly and Iqbal changed the pleading standard in federal courtbecause of concerns about the ostensible cost of discovery. And there are dozensof other examples in which fears about discovery are used to justify decisionsabout jurisdiction, interbranch conflicts, First Amendment challenges, the reachof certain statutes, and other issues. In this way, discovery acts like “darkmatter,” which is most easily identified by its effect on other areas of law.
Second, the assumption that discovery is beset by a lack of error correctionand law clarification because of the absence of formal appellate guidance failsto recognize the normative guidance provided by the Court’s dark-matterdiscovery and the quasi-appellate review following from the rise of magistratejudges as the frontline managers of discovery. To the former, this Articlecanvases almost fifty trial-level courts’ decisions that reference the discoverydicta in Twombly and Iqbal to decide discovery disputes. To the latter, districtjudges routinely review magistrate judges’ discovery decisions, and this Articlehighlights several examples in which they correct unjust applications of the lawor clarify important doctrinal questions.
In this way, one sees how the functions of appellate review have beenchanneled in ways consistent with institutional expertise instead of formal judicial hierarchy. The trial-level judges are given primary responsibility for themanagement of discovery disputes, including error correction and lawclarification, by having district judges review the decisions of magistrate judges.At the other end of the spectrum, the Roberts Court has used its bully pulpit tomake pronouncements about the normative tradeoffs implicated by commondiscovery disputes, which has some—but not necessarily a great deal of—traction. While this jury-rigged system largely seems to be working, it has notbeen explicitly identified, and several factors are poised to disrupt the existingequilibrium