The Anatomy Of The Law

This is the long-awaited second edition of this highly regarded comparative overview of corporate law. This edition has been comprehensively updated to reflect profound changes in corporate law. It now includes consideration of additional matters such as the highly topical issue of enforcement in corporate law, and explores the continued convergence of corporate law across jurisdictions. The authors start from the premise that corporate (or company) law across jurisdictions addresses the same three basic agency problems: (1) the opportunism of managers vis-à-vis shareholders; (2) the opportunism of controlling shareholders vis-à-vis minority shareholders; and (3) the opportunism of shareholders as a class vis-à-vis other corporate constituencies, such as corporate creditors and employees. Every jurisdiction must address these problems in a variety of contexts, framed by the corporation's internal dynamics and its interactions with the product, labor, capital, and takeover markets. The authors' central claim, however, is that corporate (or company) forms are fundamentally similar and that, to a surprising degree, jurisdictions pick from among the same handful of legal strategies to address the three basic agency issues. This book explains in detail how (and why) the principal European jurisdictions, Japan, and the United States sometimes select identical legal strategies to address a given corporate law problem, and sometimes make divergent choices. After an introductory discussion of agency issues and legal strategies, the book addresses the basic governance structure of the corporation, including the powers of the board of directors and the shareholders meeting. It proceeds to creditor protection measures, related-party transactions, and fundamental corporate actions such as mergers and charter amendments. Finally, it concludes with an examination of friendly acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and the regulation of the capital markets.

This overview starts from the premise that corporate law across jurisdictions addresses the same three basic agency problems - the opportunism of: managers vis-a-vis shareholders; controlling shareholders vis-a-vis minority shareholders; and shareholdersvis-a-vis other corporate constituencies.

Written to be accessible to all readers with a basic knowledge of tort law, this book adopts an approach which is both easily comprehended, yet also innovative and illuminating. It sets out a new and theoretically stimulating analysis of the law of tort, in which the subject is reconceived as a system of ethical rules and principles of personal responsibility. As such it can be viewed as a series of relationships between protected interests, sanctioned conduct and sanctions. These are the "building blocks" of tort law. Beyond affording a means of comprehending the fragmentary nature of tort law, the book, equally importantly, seeks to develop understanding of its relationship with other areas of the law of obligations. It also permits clearer understanding of the relationship between common law and statutory torts and throws fresh light on the links between tort law and its functions.

This is the long-awaited third edition of this highly regarded comparative overview of corporate law. This edition has been comprehensively revised and updated to reflect the profound changes in corporate law and governance practices that have taken place since the previous edition. These include numerous regulatory changes following the financial crisis of 2007-09 and the changing landscape of governance, especially in the US, with the ever more central role of institutional investors as (active) owners of corporations. The geographic scope of the coverage has been broadened to include an important emerging economy, Brazil. In addition, the book now incorporates analysis of the burgeoning use of corporate law to protect the interests of "external constituencies" without any contractual relationship to a company, in an attempt to tackle broader social and economic problems. The authors start from the premise that corporations (or companies) in all jurisdictions share the same key legal attributes: legal personality, limited liability, delegated management, transferable shares, and investor ownership. Businesses using the corporate form give rise to three basic types of agency problems: those between managers and shareholders as a class; controlling shareholders and minority shareholders; and shareholders as a class and other corporate constituencies, such as corporate creditors and employees. After identifying the common set of legal strategies used to address these agency problems and discussing their interaction with enforcement institutions, The Anatomy of Corporate Law illustrates how a number of core jurisdictions around the world deploy such strategies. In so doing, the book highlights the many commonalities across jurisdictions and reflects on the reasons why they may differ on specific issues. The analysis covers the basic governance structure of the corporation, including the powers of the board of directors and the shareholder meeting, both when management and when a dominant shareholder is in control. It then analyses the role of corporate law in shaping labor relationships, protection of external stakeholders, relationships with creditors, related-party transactions, fundamental corporate actions such as mergers and charter amendments, takeovers, and the regulation of capital markets. The Anatomy of Corporate Law has established itself as the leading book in the field of comparative corporate law. Across the world, students and scholars at various stages in their careers, from undergraduate law students to well-established authorities in the field, routinely consult this book as a starting point for their inquiries.

Winner of the 2022 Inner Temple New Authors Book Prize. This book seeks to further our understanding of the nature of administrative law doctrine and adjudication. It has three main aims. The first is to improve understanding of administrative law's 'anatomy' by pulling the subject apart and exploring the nature of the legal structures at play in adjudication. In doing so, the book emphasises three main ways in which administrative law's anatomy is both complex and diverse, namely: - administrative law doctrine interacts with a broad array of legislative frameworks; - administrative law adjudication seeks to accommodate a variety of legal values; and, - administrative law is concerned with legal relationships of different kinds. The second aim is to illustrate the importance of recognising the complexity and variety of administrative law's anatomy in three particular doctrinal contexts: procedural review, legitimate expectations and standing. The third and final aim is to raise an important but under-explored question: is it plausible and useful to attempt to make sense of administrative law doctrine by reference to a singular organising concept or principle? The overarching message of the book is one of cynicism. The complexity and variety of administrative law's legal structures probably means that attempts to explain the field 'monistically', while they may capture important themes, will be unhelpfully reductionist. Ambitious and thought-provoking, this is an important new statement on administrative law.