How loopholes turned Dish Network into a ‘very small business’

Steven Davidoff Solomon writes for The New York Times, February 24, 2015

At this point you may be scratching your head. How can Dish, a company with a $34 billion market value, be a “very small business”? … Through sleight of hand and aggressive use of partners and loopholes, Dish turned itself into that very small business, distorting reality and creating an unfair advantage.

Delaware courts pause on the deal price do-over

Steven Davidoff Solomon writes for The New York Times, February 19, 2015

The surge in appraisal rights cases and the arguments from advocates and opponents have been dumped into the laps of the courts in Delaware, where most companies are incorporated and these actions mostly take place. Delaware judges are beginning to sort this issue out.

A violin once owned by Goebbels keeps its secrets

Carla Shapreau writes for The New York Times, September 21, 2012

During the war musical manuscripts, printed music, books and instruments were confiscated, swept up as war trophies, lost or displaced under circumstances of crisis. A Nazi unit known as the Sonderstab Musik was among those tasked with such looting. Evidence of seizures and opaque transactions during the Nazi era are scattered in a sea of archival records in the United States and Europe.

Questions loom over China’s legal reform drive

Stanley Lubman writes for The Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2015

What remains unclear is whether Chinese leaders intend to make meaningful changes within that framework to raise the quality of Chinese justice, or are merely paying lip-service to justice as they continue the old patterns of authoritarian control.

Patching up the social safety net

Alan Auerbach quoted in The New York Times, March 17, 2015

The great irony, Professor Auerbach notes, is that “inequality is increasing yet our ability to do anything about it is weakening.” The main job for any Democratic president might not be to bolster the nation’s social insurance apparatus but simply to hold the line.

For tech titans, sharing has its limits

Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in The New York Times, March 14, 2015

Christopher Hoofnagle … said that while it was noteworthy that data merchants were seeking greater personal privacy themselves, they also may well be on the right track. A nondisclosure agreement, which keeps intimate information from ever getting online where it can spread, “is the sensible thing to do.”