The Research Handbook on Fiduciary Law offers specially commissioned chapters written by leading scholars and covers a wide range of important topics in fiduciary law. Topical contributions discuss: various fiduciary relationships; the duty of loyalty and other fiduciary obligations; fiduciary remedies; the role of equity; the role of trust; international and comparative perspectives; and public fiduciary law. This Research Handbook will be of interest to readers concerned with both theory and practice, as it incorporates significant new insights and developments in the field.
The Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law provides a comprehensive overview of critical topics in fiduciary law and theory through chapters authored by leading scholars. The Handbook opens with surveys of the many fields of law in which fiduciary duties arise, including agency law, trust law, corporate law, pension law, bankruptcy law, family law, employment law, legal representation, health care, and international law. Drawing on these surveys, the Handbook offers a synthetic analysis of fiduciary law's key concepts and principles. Chapters in the Handbook explore the defining features of fiduciary relationships, clarify the distinctive fiduciary duties that arise in these relationships, and identify the remedies available for breach of fiduciary duties. The volume also provides numerous comparative perspectives on fiduciary law from eminent legal historians and from scholars with deep expertise in a diverse array of the world's legal systems. Finally, the Handbook lays the groundwork for future research on fiduciary law and theory by highlighting cross-cutting themes, identifying persistent theoretical and practical challenges, and exploring how the field could be enriched through empirical analysis and interdisciplinary insights from economics, philosophy, and psychology. Unparalleled in its breadth and depth of coverage, The Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law represents an invaluable resource for practitioners, policymakers, scholars, and students in this essential field of law.
The global financial crisis evidenced the corrosive effects of unethical behaviour upon the banking industry. The recurrence of misbehaviour in the financial sector, including fraud and manipulations of market indices, suggests the need to establish a banking culture that conforms to the highest standards of ethical and professional behaviour. This Research Handbook on Law and Ethics in Banking and Finance focuses on the role that law should play and the effectiveness of newly introduced regulations and supervisory actions as a driver for ethical conduct so as to reconnect the interests of bankers and financiers with the interests of society.
This book is about fiduciary law’s influence on the financial economy’s environmental performance, focusing on how the law affects responsible investing and considering possible legal reforms to shift financial markets closer towards sustainability. Fiduciary law governs how trustees, fund managers or other custodians administer the investment portfolios owned by beneficiaries. Written for a diverse audience, not just legal scholars, the book examines in a multi-jurisdictional context an array of philosophical, institutional and economic issues that have shaped the movement for responsible investing and its legal framework. Fiduciary law has acquired greater influence in the financial economy in tandem with the extraordinary recent growth of institutional funds such as pension plans and insurance company portfolios. While the fiduciary prejudice against responsible investing has somewhat waned in recent years, owing mainly to reinterpretations of fiduciary and trust law, significant barriers remain. This book advances the notion of ‘nature’s trust’ to metaphorically signal how fiduciary responsibility should accommodate society’s dependence on long-term environmental well-being. Financial institutions, managing vast investment portfolios on behalf of millions of beneficiaries, should manage those investments with regard to the broader social interest in sustaining ecological health. Even for their own financial self-interest, investors over the long-term should benefit from maintaining nature’s capital. We should expect everyone to act in nature’s trust, from individual funds to market regulators. The ancient public trust doctrine could be refashioned for stimulating this change, and sovereign wealth funds should take the lead in pioneering best practices for environmentally responsible investing.
Comprising essays specially commissioned for the volume, leading scholars who have shaped the field of corporate law and governance explore and critique developments in this vibrant and expanding area and offer possible directions for future research. This important addition to the Research Handbooks in Law and Economics series provides insights into subjects such as the role of directors, shareholders, creditors and employees; empirical studies of litigation and shareholder activism; executive compensation; corporate gatekeepers; comparative law; and behavioral approaches to law and finance. Topics are organized within five sections: corporate constituencies, insider governance, gatekeepers, jurisdiction, and new theory. Taken as a whole, the volume serves as an introduction for those new to the field and as a reference for those unfamiliar with some of the topics discussed. Authoritative and accessible, the Research Handbook on the Economics of Corporate Law will be a valuable resource for students, scholars, and practitioners of corporate law and economics.
In Fiduciary Law, Tamar Frankel examines the structure, principles, themes, and objectives of fiduciary law. Fiduciaries, which include corporate managers, money managers, lawyers, and physicians among others, are entrusted with money or power. Frankel explains how fiduciary law is designed to offer protection from abuse of this method of safekeeping. She deals with fiduciaries in general, and identifies situations in which fiduciary law falls short of offering protection. Frankel analyzes fiduciary debates, and argues that greater preventive measures are required. She offers guidelines for determining the boundaries and substance of fiduciary law, and discusses how failure to enforce fiduciary law can contribute to failing financial and economic systems. Frankel offers ideas and explanations for the courts, regulators, and legislatures, as well as the fiduciaries and entrustors. She argues for strong legal protection against abuse of entrustment as a means of encouraging fiduciary services in society. Fiduciary Law can help lawyers and policy makers designing the future law and the systems that it protects.
The idea that the state is a fiduciary to its citizens has a long pedigree - ultimately reaching back to the ancient Greeks, and including Hobbes and Locke among its proponents. Public fiduciary theory is now experiencing a resurgence, with applications that range from international law, to insider trading by members of Congress, to election law and gerrymandering. This book is the first of its kind: a collection of chapters by leading writers on public fiduciary subject areas. The authors develop new accounts of how fiduciary principles apply to representation; to officials and judges; to problems of legitimacy and political obligation; to positive rights; to the state itself; and to the history of ideas. The resulting volume should be of great interest to political theorists and public law scholars, to private fiduciary law scholars, and to students seeking an introduction to this new and increasingly relevant area of study.
This timely Research Handbook examines the increasingly economically vital topic of corporate restructuring. Reflecting a shift in the global approach to insolvency towards a focus on rescuing viable businesses rather than liquidation, chapters consider all areas of the law closely connected to corporate insolvency, rehabilitation and rescue, as well as the introduction of the EU Preventive Restructuring Directive and other reforms from around the world.
Winner of the second SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship 2010. Fiduciary Loyalty presents a comprehensive analysis of the nature and function of fiduciary duties. The concept of loyalty, which lies at the heart of fiduciary doctrine, is a form of protection which is designed to enhance the likelihood of due performance of non-fiduciary duties, by seeking to avoid influences or temptations that may distract the fiduciary from providing such proper performance. In developing this position, the book takes the novel approach of putting to one side the difficult question of when fiduciary duties arise in order to focus attention instead on what fiduciary duties do when they are owed. The issue of when fiduciary duties arise can then be returned to, and considered more profitably, once a clear view has emerged of the function that such duties perform. The analysis advanced in the book has both practical and theoretical implications for understanding fiduciary doctrine. For example, it provides a sound conceptual footing for understanding the relationship between fiduciary and non-fiduciary duties, highlighting the practical importance of analysing both forms of duties carefully when considering fiduciary claims. Further, it explains a number of tenets within fiduciary doctrine, such as the proscriptive nature of fiduciary duties and the need to obtain the principal's fully informed consent in order to avoid fiduciary liability. Understanding the relationship between fiduciary and non-fiduciary duties also provides a solid foundation for addressing issues concerning compensatory remedies for their breach and potential defences such as contributory fault. The distinctive purpose that fiduciary duties serve also provides a firm theoretical basis for maintaining their separation from other forms of civil obligation, such as those that arise under the law of contracts and of torts.
