Arthur H. Kohn is partner and Elizabeth Bieber and Vanessa C. Richardson are associates at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. This post is based on their Cleary Gottlieb publication and is part of the Delaware law series; links to other posts in the series are available here.
Public and private businesses today face many decisions that do not arise from, and have consequences far beyond, solely financial performance. Rather, these decisions are primarily driven by, and implicate, important social, cultural and political concerns. They include harassment, pay equity and other issues raised by the #MeToo movement; immigration and labor markets; trade policy; sustainability and climate change; the manufacture, distribution and financing of guns and opioids; corporate money in politics; privacy regulation in social media; cybersecurity; advertising, boycotts and free speech; race relations issues raised by the pledge of allegiance controversy; the financing of healthcare; the tension between religious freedom and discrimination laws; and the impact of executive pay on income inequality, among others. If the nature of the issues is not unprecedented, the number, diversity and polarization seem to be.
