On September 30, 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 206, otherwise known as “The Fair Pay to Play Act.” When it goes into effect, the Fair Pay to Play Act will allow student-athletes enrolled in California colleges and universities to be compensated for the use of their name, images, and likenesses […]

The following Piece reflects the revised and extended remarks given by Barbara Novick at the Harvard Roundtable on Corporate Governance, November 6, 2019. Thank you to Lucian Bebchuk for inviting me to share some thoughts on investment stewardship to kick off the 2019 Corporate Governance Roundtable. I. Academic Theories on Investment Stewardship Corporate governance and […]

Index funds own an increasingly large proportion of American public companies. The stewardship decisions of index fund managers—how they monitor, vote, and engage with their portfolio companies—can be expected to have a profound impact on the governance and performance of public companies and the economy. Understanding index fund stewardship, and how policymaking can improve it, is thus critical for corporate law scholarship. In this Article...

Law should help direct—and not merely constrain—the development of artificial intelligence (AI). One path to influence is the development of standards of care both supplemented and informed by rigorous regulatory guidance. Such standards are particularly important given the potential for inaccurate and inappropriate data to contaminate machine learning. Firms relying on faulty data can be required to compensate those harmed by that data use—and...

Recent advances in machine learning have reinforced the competitive position of leading online platforms. This Essay identifies two important sources of platform rivalry and proposes ways to maximize their competitive potential under existing antitrust law. A nascent competitor is a threatening new entrant that, in time, might become a full-fledged platform rival. A platform’s acquisition of a nascent competitor should be prohibited as an unlawful...

In June 2018, the Supreme Court decided Animal Science Products, Inc. v. Hebei Welcome Pharmaceutical Co. and resolved a circuit split regarding the amount of deference courts must give to amicus briefs filed by foreign sovereign governments. The Court articulated a new standard of deference, “respectful consideration,” but did not take the opportunity to give weight or meaning to it. This Note argues that more must be done to develop the respectful...

The financial crisis exposed major fault lines in banking and financial markets more broadly. Policymakers responded with far-reaching regulation that created a new agency—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—and changed the structure and function of these markets.

Consumer advocates cheered reforms as welfare enhancing, while the financial sector declared that consumers would be harmed by interventions. With a decade of data now...

THE AESTHETICS OF DISABILITY

Jasmine E. Harris *

The foundational faith of disability law is the proposition that we can reduce disability discrimination if we can foster interactions between disabled and nondisabled people. This central faith, which is rooted in contact theory, has encouraged integration of people with and without disabilities, with the expectation that contact will reduce preju­dicial atti­tudes and shift societal norms. However, neither the scholarship nor disa­bility law...

A handful of digital platforms mediate a growing share of online commerce and communications. By structuring access to markets, these firms function as gatekeepers for billions of dollars in economic activity. One feature dominant digital platforms share is that they have inte­grated across business lines such that they both operate a platform and market their own goods and services on it. This structure places domi­nant platforms in direct competition...

Most state and federal employment discrimination statutes prohibit employers from making certain decisions “because of” an employee’s protected characteristics or activities. Courts interpreting this language have developed a number of frameworks and standards to assess whether a plaintiff has demonstrated the causation required to make out a claim of employment discrimination. Two standards frequently invoked by courts are but-for causation...