William Moon on Jurisdictional Competition in Corporate Law

In this episode, William Moon, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, discusses his article "Delaware's New Competition," forthcoming in the Northwestern University Law Review. Moon begins by providing a broad outline of the contemporary understanding of American corporate law, detailing how corporate law scholarship has been based upon an understanding that some level of competition exists between states to supply corporate charters. Delaware has largely dominated this market through a combination of a friendly regulatory environment and network effects. While existing accounts presuppose an inter-state market for corporate charters, Moon notes that overseas jurisdictions have begun to compete with domestic states to supply corporate charters. He shows that a handful of foreign nations in offshore islands have built sophisticated legal infrastructure, including specialized business courts, to compete in this emerging international market. A close relationship between the private sector and legislators in these jurisdictions, which results in part from these lawmakers’ reliance on corporate franchise taxes as a source of revenue, is crucial to their success. And he concludes by discussing what shareholders, regulators, and lawyers should take away from these developments in corporate law. Moon is on Twitter at @willmoontweets.

This episode was hosted by Luce Nguyen, a college student and the co-founder of the Oberlin Policy Research Institute, an undergraduate public policy research organization based at Oberlin College. Nguyen is on Twitter at @NguyenLuce.

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