Understanding the Big Three’s Wavering Support of Environmental and Social Shareholder Proposals

Because of their substantial equity portfolios, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street (the Big 3) are central players in corporate governance. It is, therefore, critical to understand how they vote. One puzzle is that their support for shareholder proposals on environmental and social matters appears to waiver. In 2020, for instance, BlackRock supported 11.1% of environmental proposals at S&P 500 firms. In 2021, it seemingly reversed course, supporting 55.2%. It then flipped again, supporting 32.1% in 2022. Such statistics suggest that the Big 3 are constantly changing their views on these topics. This Article seeks to better understand whether this is the case. Using a hand-collected dataset of the Big 3’s voting records with respect to S&P 500 firms from 2018–2022, we first describe the extent to which Big 3 voting has fluctuated. Second, we show that because the pool of proposals varies from year to year, and the companies targeted for such proposals also vary, summary statistics about Big 3 voting tell us little about whether they are changing their positions from year to year. Finally, to control for variation in the pool of proposals and in the pool of companies, the Article analyzes Big 3 voting only with respect to repeat proposals at the same firms. We find (1) that the Big 3 remained largely, but not wholly, consistent; (2) that when they changed their votes, it was usually to support proposals that they previously opposed; and (3) that, in some cases, changes on repeat proposals provide a meaningful explanation for year-over-year changes in their voting patterns

The Lost Child: A Critique on Transracial Adoption Rhetoric

Transracial adoption in the United States reflects a deeply rooted history of colonialism, cultural assimilation, and racial hierarchy, masked by rhetoric focused on the “best interest of the child.” The author critiques that rhetoric and traces how adoption practices and policies, both domestic and international, have evolved to reinforce systemic inequities. Through historical analysis of the forced adoption of Native American, Black, and Asian children, it reveals how the best interest standard has been wielded not to protect children but to uphold political and racial ideologies. The author argues that the prevailing adoption framework relies on child-saving and color-blind narratives that silence adoptee voices and obscure the cultural harm inflicted on transracial adoptees. In response, it calls for a rhetorical and legal shift that centers adoptee experiences and recognizes the complex racial and cultural dimensions of transracial adoption. By embracing new frameworks such as the Cultural-Racial Identity Model and Adoption Kinship Network, the author urges the legal system to abandon one-size-fits-all notions of child welfare in favor of identity-affirming, community-rooted approaches that reflect the lived realities of adoptees

Can the Law Protect My Craft? How Gaps in Copyright of Knitting Patterns Symbolize a Greater Struggle for Protecting Traditionally Feminine Forms of Intellectual Property

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the application of intel-lectual property rights within the context of copyright protection of knit-ting patterns. The article will discuss the underutilization of copyright pro-tection for knitters and crafters and its larger impact upon craft and indus-try traditionally comprised of women. Part I introduces knitting patterns and a short history of copyright protections. Part II discusses the specific areas within knitting patterns and the knitting community which give rise to legal grey areas for copyright protection. Part III discusses the larger implications of copyright and intellectual property in spaces where women traditionally make up the majority of those producing works and seeking protection; it also covers theories of feminism which impact the underuti-lization of intellectual property protection. Part IV proposes solutions for development of copyright law to better encompass crafts and provide op-portunities to expand knowledge of copyright protection so that women, small business owners, and traditionally minority communities can utilize protections to which they are entitled to. Part V concludes

Good Newsletter March 28, 2025

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Alaska

There are not enough cases from the Alaska commission to draw general conclusions about the commission’s treatment of mandatory subjects of bargaining in police and non-police contexts. In the cases discussed below, the commission typically found that the employer’s interests outweighed the employees’ interests, with a slight preference to find bargaining subjects mandatory in the police context

Table of Contents

Table of Content

How the Antidiscrimination Law of Commercial Transactions Really Works

A variety of businesses now cite 303 Creative when seeking First Amendment protection for their refusal to serve certain customers based on those customers’ protected class status. How this litigation will play out remains to be seen. But future courts need not, and should not, repeat the 303 Creative Court’s misunderstanding of how the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions actually works. Part I of this Essay explains the Court’s longstanding understanding of the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions, and then describes the Court’s failure to engage with this precedent in 303 Creative. Part II then identifies the 303 Creative decision’s repeated mischaracterization of the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions as addressing the content of a commercial product or service—when that law instead focuses on the protected class status of those seeking to buy those products or services. Part III considers how unusual features of the dispute in 303 Creative may have contributed to, or exacerbated, the Court’s misunderstanding of the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions. The Essay closes by noting how the Court’s misunderstanding of how the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions really works likely contributed to its ultimate constitutional holding—and that this misunderstanding need not, and should not, extend to any other case

No Lawyer, No Jail: A Critical Case Study of Pragmatism and the Flaws of “Purposeful” Decision Making in Argersinger v. Hamlin

By releasing conference notes and internal communications, Supreme Court Justices provide insight into the otherwise private decisionmaking process, shedding light on how case outcomes and legal reasoning are framed and negotiated. The watershed case of Argersinger v. Hamlin (1972) extended the constitutional right to counsel to some, but not all, misdemeanor defendants. The case was argued twice, and the Court relied on empirical and authoritative sources to answer complex and practical questions about requiring counsel. This case study employs critical discourse analysis to uncover what influenced the Justices’ decisions and how they framed, shaped, and constructed social realities to foreground the values of legal elites at the expense of nondominant interests. Pragmatic considerations and expert authorities emerged as two prominent and discursive strategies that shifted the emphasis, favored the voices and values of legal elites, and narrowed the scope of the right to counsel. Conclusions drawn from these findings show the implications for criminal defendants’ interests and advance the need for future qualitative research that critically scrutinizes the hegemonic influence of legal pragmatism on constitutional decision-making