Tornetta v. Musk is the Rule of Law at Work
In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on February 22, Gov. Jeb Bush and Joe Lonsdale have it exactly backwards when they complain that Tornetta v. Musk “imperil[s] the rule of law.” Messrs. Bush and Lonsdale misrepresent the case as “arbitrary enforcement” in violation of “equality before the law.” The aspects of Tornetta that […]
Holger Spamann is the Lawrence R. Grove Professor at Harvard Law School. This post is based on his recent op-ed. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes Executive Compensation as an Agency Problem and Pay without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation both by Lucian A. Bebchuk and Jesse M. Fried; The Growth of Executive Pay by Lucian A. Bebchuk and Yaniv Grinstein; and The CEO Pay Slice (discussed on the Forum here) by Lucian A. Bebchuk, Martijn Cremers, and Urs Peyer.
In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on February 22, Gov. Jeb Bush and Joe Lonsdale have it exactly backwards when they complain that Tornetta v. Musk “imperil[s] the rule of law.” Messrs. Bush and Lonsdale misrepresent the case as “arbitrary enforcement” in violation of “equality before the law.” The aspects of Tornetta that Messrs. Bush and Lonsdale complain about, however, are just business as usual in U.S. corporate law. Tornetta does exactly what Messrs. Bush and Lonsdale want courts to do: it applies “equal justice” even to the most powerful, most vocal CEO alive.
