A Civil Conversation With the Party Bosses

Yesterday, a packed room of more than one hundred people at the Law School was treated to the latest installment of On the Issues with Mike Gousha, featuring Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus and Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Joe Wineke.  Gousha began the program by asking Priebus and Wineke about what role Wisconsin will play in the outcome of this year’s presidential election.  Both party chairmen confirmed that Wisconsin is considered “in play” for the presidential election, with recent polling showing Barack Obama with a narrow 2-3 point lead over John McCain in the state.  When asked what factor(s) will determine the election, Priebus suggested that the issue of trust — that is, which candidate voters trust most — will be dispositive.  Wineke countered that the election would turn on the economy.  Both also agreed that get out the vote (GOTV) volunteer efforts will be critical to success, in the state and nationally. 

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Addressing the Short-Termer Problem in Corporate Governance

Continuing our faculty workshop series, Nadelle Grossman presented a work in progress earlier this week entitled “Clarifying the Long-Term Nature of Director and Shareholder Fiduciary Duties.”  Her presentation examined the various factors that have magnified the influence of short-term institutional shareholders, such as hedge funds and activist investors, over the decisions of corporate management.  These factors include the way the market punishes firms that fail to meet their quarterly earnings targets, the incentives of money managers to maximize their own fees by boosting the share price of their holdings, and the increasing effectiveness of the shareholder franchise.  Professor Grossman argued that the increasing influence of the “short-termers” has impaired management’s ability to set a long-term strategy for the corporation.  Her thesis is that the fiduciary duties of directors and institutional shareholders should be re-examined in order to promote the adoption of business strategies with longer time frames.

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Me and the Man

I just got back from Florida State, where I presented a paper at a faculty workshop.  (Many thanks to Professor and PrawfsBlawger Dan Markel for being a terrific host.)  In the paper, I propose a new type of specialized drug court built around restorative justice principles.  (The paper is not on SSRN yet, but look for it soon.)  The FSU folks had a lot of helpful comments and questions.  In one of the more interesting exchanges, my interlocutor raised a concern that restorative justice, with its focus on personal accountability, would detract from a broader social justice agenda, drawing attention away from the structural inequalities in society that contribute to the prevalence of crime in low-income communities.  It’s a fair point, although I think my proposed RJ program, which would draw lay community representatives into conferences with drug offenders, is capable of contributing to the sort of community mobilization and political activism that my interlocutor favors.  In any event, I was a bit surpised to find myself defending RJ from a social justice challenge.  RJ proponents sometimes present themselves as the vanguard of a revolutionary social movement.  How ironic, then, that when I first advocate an RJ solution to an important social problem, it is suggested that I am really acting as (to use Chad Oldfather’s phrase) “Agent of the Man”!

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