Worship and evangelism in pre-Christendom

Kreider, Alan. Worship and evangelism in pre-Christendom. Cambridge, England: Grove Books, 1995

Internal Controls After Sarbanes-Oxley: Revisiting Corporate Law\u27s Duty of Care as Responsibility for Systems

Revisiting section 3.4.2 of Clark\u27s Corporate Law (\u27Duty of Care as Responsibility for Systems ) reminds us, however, that the internal controls story actually goes back many decades, and that many of the strategic issues that are at the heart of section 404 have long been contentious. My Article will briefly update Clark\u27s account through the late 1980s and 1990s before returning to Sarbanes-Oxley and rulemaking thereunder by the SEC and the newly created Public Company Accounting Oversight Board ( PCAOB ). My main point builds on one of Clark\u27s but digs deeper. Internal controls requirements, whether federal or state, are incoherent unless and until one articulates clearly for whose benefit they exist, and to what end. There are, in fact, a number of competing articulations. The failure to identify a single and coherent rationale creates significant uncertainty, which has been exploited by players in the legal, accounting, consulting, and information technology fields. Companies are probably spending more time and resources on 404 compliance than a reasonable reading of the legislation and the rules necessarily requires, heavily influenced by those who gain from issuer over-compliance. This rent-seeking compromises the political viability and substantive quality of what is at the heart a beneficial statutory reform

Cultures of Compliance

There has been a cultural turn in discussion and debates about the promise of corporate compliance efforts. These efforts are occurring quickly, without great confidence in their efficacy. Thus the interest in culture. This article explores what a culture of compliance means and why it is so hard to achieve. The dark side that enables non-compliance in organizations is powerful and often hidden from view, working via scripts that rationalize or normalize, denigrations of regulation, and celebrations of beliefs and attitudes that bring with them compliance dangers. The article addresses how both culture and compliance should be judged by those wishing for better corporate behavior

When Lawyers and Law Firms Invest in Their Corporate Clients’ Stock

I will state my conclusion at the outset. I am not convinced that lawyers\u27 investments in clients in lieu of fees are problematic enough from a conflicts standpoint that the rules of professional responsibility should treat them as presumptively inconsistent with the lawyer\u27s fiduciary responsibility. Lawyers\u27 investments in their clients do raise interesting and unsettling issues, but these issues are not qualitatively different from issues raised by many other norms or practices within the legal profession that also threaten lawyerly objectivity. Indeed, in contrast to some other practices, these fee arrangements can, in some respects, enhance objectivity, or at least balance out some of the agency-cost problems that otherwise infect attorney-client relationships in the corporate setting. If so, broadly banning these fee arrangements in the name of fiduciary responsibility makes little sense. My aim here, in large part, is to speak to the good lawyer about what objectivity and prudence really mean in a world where serious wealth has become the metric for professional success, and how both law and ethics ought to respond to the residual problems caused by these fee arrangements

Foundations of Christian music: the music of pre-Constantinian Christianity

Reviewed Book: Foley, Edward. Foundations of Christian music: the music of pre-Constantinian Christianity. Bramcote, England: Alcuin Club, 1992. American essays in liturgy

Reading Stoneridge Carefully: A Duty-based Approach to Reliance and Third Party Liability Under Rule 10b-5

The Supreme Court\u27s decision in the Stoneridge case has largely been interpreted as a imposing a strict, pro-defendant reliance requirement. This article offers an alternative reading that takes the Court\u27s analysis more seriously than its overheated dicta, one that makes remoteness a serious and meaningful inquiry that can produce balanced and fair responses to the concern that seemed to motivate the search for restraint: fear of disproportionate liability. It explores the nature of the dispropotion, and suggests ways--using the Court\u27s own explanatory tools--for deciding when third party involvement is close enough to the fraud so that fear of disproportion lessens. Among other things, this approach leads clearly to a rejection of the so-called attribution approach for liability. Recognizing that a statutory solution may be better than judicial patchwork, it also offers a coupling of expanded liability with a more rational and sensible proportionate liability regime than now exists