Professor Stephen Bainbridge has provided a list of the most “over-studied” topics in corporate law. The good professor is not saying that the topics are unimportant; rather he suggests that they often receive more attention from academics than is warranted. An excerpt from his post follows:
So here are some candidates, in no particular order.
* Whether the corporation is a nexus of contracts
* Corporate philanthropy
* Corporate social responsibility
* Predicting what Rawls or Dworkin would say about anything remotely related to corporate law
* The Perlman v. Feldman suite of issues
* The utility of rational actor models in the law and economics of corporate governance
* Anything having to do with the Constitution and corporations
* Insider trading? (Very important, of course, but written to death)
* Executive compensation (ditto)
* Agency costs (ditto)
* Corporate takeovers (ditto, at least back in the day)
* The race to the bottom
* Fiduciary duty of directors in the vicinity of insolvency
* A federal law of corporations
* Corporate personhood