The Modernization of Corporate Law: An Essay for Bill Cary

The business reality to which corporate law relates is constantly evolving. The author argues that in many critical areas, corporate statutory law has failed to evolve alongside that business reality, with the result that much of the statutory law is obsolescent and in need of modernization. After discussing some of the institutional reasons for this statutory obsolescence, he illustrates the problem by discussing the areas of corporate combinations, shareholders' informational rights, corporate distributions, and corporate structure, and describes how a few statutes have managed to deal with the underlying issues in these areas in a realistic manner. He concludes by discussing the prospects for modernizing corporate statutory law