Kavya Vaghul is Senior Director of Research and Ashley Marchand Orme is Director of Corporate Equity at JUST Capital. This post is based on a JUST Capital memorandum by Ms. Vaghul, Ms. Orme, Aleksandra Radeva, Daniel Krasner, Kim Ira, and Molly Stutzman. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes Politics and Gender in the Executive Suite by Alma Cohen, Moshe Hazan, and David Weiss (discussed on the Forum here); Will Nasdaq’s Diversity Rules Harm Investors? by Jesse M. Fried (discussed on the Forum here); and Duty and Diversity by Chris Brummer and Leo E. Strine, Jr. (discussed on the Forum here).
In the two years since the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans ignited a national reckoning with racial injustice, dozens of America’s largest companies have made unprecedented commitments to advancing racial equity in their workplaces and communities. Last year, we began tracking these commitments—as well as the concrete actions corporate America was beginning to take—as part of our 2021 Corporate Racial Equity Tracker. Below, we’ve updated our Tracker with the latest corporate performance data on these issues, tracking whether companies are making progress toward their goals, two years on.
With our recent survey research showing that 92% of Americans overall (up from 79% last year) and 95% of Black Americans believe it is important for companies to promote racial diversity and equity in the workplace, the demand for action on corporate commitments has only increased—especially considering that 68% of Americans, and 87% of Black Americans, agree companies have more work to do.
The 2022 Corporate Racial Equity Tracker offers an in-depth accounting of the commitments and actions announced by the 100 largest U.S. employers, through 23 metrics across six specific dimensions of racial equity:
- Anti-Discrimination Policies
- Pay Equity
- Racial/Ethnic Diversity Data
- Education and Training Programs
- Response to Mass Incarceration
- Community Investments
The SEC’s Authority to Pursue Climate-Related Disclosure
More from: Cynthia Williams, Donna Nagy, George Georgiev, Jill Fisch
Jill E. Fisch is the Saul A. Fox Distinguished Professor of Business Law and co-Director of the Institute for Law and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. This post is based on a comment letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by Prof. Fisch; George S. Georgiev, Associate Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law; Donna M. Nagy, C. Ben Dutton Professor of Business Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law; and Cynthia A. Williams, Visiting Professor of Law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law and Professor of Law Emerita at the University of Illinois College of Law.
On behalf of the 30 undersigned law professors, all of whom teach and write on U.S. securities law and capital markets regulation, we welcome the opportunity to provide our views on the Commission’s recent proposal related to the enhancement and standardization of climate-related disclosures for investors (the “Proposal”). We focus on a single question—whether the Proposal is within the Commission’s rulemaking authority—and we unanimously answer this question in the affirmative. We base this conclusion on the analysis set out below. We do not all agree on the policy issues facing the Commission with respect to the optimal scope of environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure, including climate-related disclosure. But we all share the view that the Commission has ample, longstanding, and clear authority to promulgate disclosure rules in this area.
1. The Plain Text, Legislative History, and Judicial Interpretation of the Securities Laws Support the Commission’s Authority to Mandate Climate-Related Disclosures
The federal securities laws establish the Commission as the primary regulator of the capital markets, and Congress instructed the Commission, through those laws, to regulate the markets through an extensive disclosure regime for publicly traded companies. The Commission’s statutory authority over disclosure is broad. In 2018, then-Chairman Jay Clayton described the Commission’s disclosure system as “powerful, far reaching, dynamic and ever evolving” and noted that “[a]s stewards of this . . . system, a key responsibility of the SEC is to ensure that the mix of information companies provide to investors facilitates well-informed decision making.”
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