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Faculty Focus

A Streak of Top 10s Times Two

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For the sixth year in a row, articles authored or co-authored by both Marcel Kahan, George T. Lowy Professor of Law, and Stephen Choi, Murray and Kathleen Bring Professor of Law, appear on the Corporate Practice Commentator’s annual “Top 10 Corporate and Securities Articles” list. This year’s poll tabulates the top selections by teachers of corporate and securities law from a pool of more than 580 articles published in 2011.

Over the 18-year history of the annual lists, 17 of Kahan’s articles and 12 of Choi’s have been recognized by their peers, making Kahan and Choi first and second, respectively, among all the authors selected since the poll began in 1994.

Two of Kahan’s articles appear on this year’s list. “When the Government Is the Controlling Shareholder,” from the Texas Law Review, concerns the recent corporate bailouts and shows that existing accountability structures do not provide sufficient protection of minority shareholder interests; it ends by hoping “this anomalous era of government control comes to a speedy conclusion.” “The Insignificance of Proxy Access,” from the Virginia Law Review, argues that shareholder access to the proxy will result in some increase in company expenses, but may only rarely have an impact on governance and only a marginal impact on company value. Both articles were written with Edward Rock of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Choi’s top-10 entry this year, “Motions for Lead Plaintiff in Securities Class Actions” in the Journal of Legal Studies, examines securities class actions filed from 2003 to 2005. It reports evidence that plaintiffs’ attorneys retain significant control over the selection of lead plaintiff, and that plaintiffs’ attorneys with greater power are able to negotiate higher attorneys’ fees as a percentage of the recovery while working fewer hours.

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