Papers by Kent Greenfield
This amicus curiae brief addresses a fundamental state-law premise of Appellants’ constitutional ... more This amicus curiae brief addresses a fundamental state-law premise of Appellants’ constitutional claims that has gone largely unexplored in the prior briefing: whether Arlene’s Flowers, a Washington for-profit corporation, may obtain an exemption from generally applicable laws based on the religious beliefs of a shareholder, Mrs. Stutzman. Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Appellants assert that “Arlene’s free-exercise rights are synonymous with Mrs. Stutzman’s.” Those two cases, however, had nothing to do with Washington corporate law and took no stance on the authority of Washington corporations to raise constitutional claims of their shareholders. The assertion that Mrs. Stutzman’s rights are synonymous with the corporation depends on Washington state law and runs counter to the foundational Washington corporate law principle, expressed in Grayson v. Nordic Constr. Co., th...
Fundamental Flaws and Progressive Possibilities
The Failure of Corporate Law
LSN: Law & Finance: Theoretical (Topic), 2011
When pondering the question of the “sustainable corporation,” as we did in this symposium, one of... more When pondering the question of the “sustainable corporation,” as we did in this symposium, one of the intractable problems is the nature of the corporation to produce externalities. By noting this characteristic, I am not making a moral point but an economic one. The nature of the firm is to create financial wealth by producing goods and services for profit; without regulatory or contractual limits, the firm has every incentive to externalize costs onto those whose interests are not included in the firm’s current financial calculus. In fact, because of the corporation’s tendency to create benefits for itself by pushing costs onto others, the corporation could aptly be called an “externality machine.”
The Conversations@BCLaw series features Professor Kent Greenfield interviewing alumni in politica... more The Conversations@BCLaw series features Professor Kent Greenfield interviewing alumni in political life
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Papers by Kent Greenfield