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Article
Reactionary Reform and Fundamental Error
Western State University Law Review (2012)
  • Reza Dibadj
Abstract
This timely Symposium poses a very insightful, yet extraordinarily difficult, question when it asks “4 More Years? Business Law and the Great Recession”. As we approach the four-year anniversary of the collapse of Bear Stearns—an event viewed by many as the start of the “Great Recession”—will we face “Four More Years” of economic difficulties and, perhaps more importantly, what might business law do to prevent economic catastrophe from recurring? In earlier work, I have tried to decipher what some of the facilitators to the Great Recession have been and whether our major legislative response, the Dodd-Frank Act, will be successful in addressing these facilitators and averting the next economic disaster. I found it did not and tried to offer some thoughts as to why. Part I draws from this research and offers a sobering portrait of the reaction business law has had so far to the Great Recession. As the years have passed and our economic malaise has dragged on, however, I have become even more pessimistic about the law’s existing reactions to economic crisis. I also wonder increasingly whether the “Great Recession” was a long time—decades—in the making and is the product of fundamental and troubling inconsistencies law and policy. Part II, the core of this Article, argues that we need to rethink some very basic principles in business law. Tinkering around the margins will simply no longer do. More specifically, I offer three areas for fundamental reform: fiduciary duties in corporate law, the constitutional personhood of corporations, and antitrust. My thesis is simple: unless there are fundamental changes in these three domains, the cavalcade of economic crises we have witnessed with increasing frequency over the past few decades will very likely continue.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2012
Citation Information
Reza Dibadj. "Reactionary Reform and Fundamental Error" Western State University Law Review Vol. forthcoming (2012)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/reza_dibadj/35/