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This article reconsiders the dominant account of corporate law's duty of loyalty, which asserts that the courts have steadily relaxed standards of fiduciary scrutiny applied to self-dealing by corporate managers across more than a century of history to the great detriment of the shareholder interest. The account originated in Harold Marsh, Jr.'s foundational article, Are Directors Trustees? Conflict of Interest and Corporate Morality, published in The Business Lawyer in 1966. Marsh's showing of historical lassitude has been successfully challenged in a recent book by Professor David Kershaw. This article takes Professor Kershaw's critique a step further, asking whether the evolutionary erosion account continues to exert normative power in today's corporate governance context. The answer is that it does not, a result that obtains even though erosion of the standards that courts apply to management self-dealing has continued unabated ever since Marsh published in 1966, and even though there is no reason to think that management self-dealing benefits the shareholder interest. The result follows from the operation of the corporate governance system, which has assimilated and redeployed the erosion account's motivating insight that officer and director self-dealing transactions do not make cost-benefit sense from the shareholder point of view. Regulation backs up the norm of aversion. Disclosure rules make self-dealing transparent to shareholders, who have no reason to like self-dealing and who now stand ready and able to register their preferences regarding such matters in corporate boardrooms. At the same time, the requirement of a majority independent board makes self-dealing transactions by board members highly inconvenient, because self-dealing undercuts independence. The practice reflects all of this, as shown by reference to hand-collected datasets of self-dealing transactions at publicly traded companies and of litigation in respect of self-dealing transactions in the Delaware Chancery Court. The classic self-dealing transaction, although still a focal point of academic discourse on corporate fiduciary law, does not matter all that much in real world companies with dispersed shareholders. It is no longer an unsolved problem stemming from separated ownership and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standards governing the validity of conflict-of-interest transactions by corporate directors or others in dominant positions have significantly evolved from the early days of strict judicial condemnation to the current statutory provisions. These provisions place great faith in and emphasis on the judgment of disinterested directors or shareholders. This evolution has not been consistent among states, given that substantial variations exist regarding both statutory provisions and judicial interpretations. To illustrate the variations, this article examines and compares the Delaware and Model Business Corporation Act standards. The variations reflect the concerns that arise when a director's fiduciary duty of loyalty conflicts with the realities and demands of the commercial world. This article examines the evolution of conflict-of-interest standards and existing variations in light of two fundamental issues: (i) whether the combination of statutory and fiduciary standards obligates directors to obtain advance approval of conflict transactions and (ii) the capacity of shareholders to challenge conflict transactions on the grounds of fairness to the corporation, even after board or shareholder approval. The article concludes that statutory and fiduciary standards obligate directors to obtain advance approval of conflict transactions and provides recommendations for addressing these two issues in a manner consistent with statutory provisions and fiduciary standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delaware corporate law embraces a "board-centric" model of governance contemplating that, as a general matter, all directors will participate in a collective and deliberative decision-making process. Rather than serving as a justification for a board majority to disempower directors elected or appointed by or at the direction of a particular class or series of stock or an insurgent group -- which we refer to as "blockholder" directors -- this system recognizes the need for a balancing of both majority and minority rights. In this article, we review the rights and duties of all directors and highlight cases where both board majorities and blockholder directors have overstepped their bounds. We caution that board majorities should deliberate carefully before taking action that limits a blockholder director's rights or excludes the blockholder director from participation in fundamental corporate matters. At the same time, we caution that blockholder directors should take care when exercising their rights, given that their affiliation with investors may make them vulnerable to duty of loyalty claims. We urge both sides to proceed with a sense of empathy toward the other and seek to make reasonable accommodations, and we emphasize the role that experienced corporate counsel can play in mediating disputes, resolving tensions, and striking the appropriate balance in the boardroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]