Course Overview:

This course is intended to provide students with the opportunity to reflect upon the intersection between business and the law. The focus of the first part is on the nature of the firm and issues of corporate governance and responsibility. The issue of corporate social responsibility and the problems Enron-style corruption and failure of governance will be addressed.

The second section will focus on the comparative analysis of governance structures.We will pursue a general understanding of the Anglo-American model as it relates to company law, shareholder rights and the agency problem. This will provide a foundation for comparing the Anglo-American pattern with others. The goal will be to examine recent dynamics in the global economy and their effects on corporate governance, with a special emphasis on examining the thesis of convergence among the different models.

In the third section recent and controversial problems regarding the relationship between business and the law will be taken up. According to many, the rise of globalization and the so-called ‘new economy’ demand fresh approaches to business law issues such as antitrust, regulation, information products and intellectual property. These will be examined from both a critical and comparative standpoint with a special emphasis on the dilemmas of ‘internationalized’ regulation, trade, dynamic changes resulting from new technologies and the belief in the superiority of market-based solutions to business responsibility and regulation.

Throughout the course the goals will be (1) to undertake normative and critical social science analysis of the key issues and (2) to develop critically informed insights into the possible (private and public) policy responses of the problems addressed.