Means on Solving the "King Lear Problem" @UofSCLaw

Benajmin Means, University of South Carolina School of Law, is publishing Solving the 'King Lear Problem' in volume 12 of the U.C. Irvine L. Rev. Here is the abstract.

In Shakespeare’s play, King Lear, an aging ruler relinquished control to two of his three daughters. The succession failed miserably, destroying his family and destabilizing his kingdom. King Lear shows why few family businesses survive beyond three generations. Understanding Lear’s failure is crucial to avoiding Lear’s fate, whether the family business in question is a monarchy, a media empire, or a hardware store. The conventional wisdom is that Lear gave away his kingdom too soon and left himself vulnerable to predatory heirs. This has been referred to as the “King Lear Problem.” The conventional wisdom is wrong. Lear’s succession plan failed because he waited too long. Like Lear, those who control family businesses are often reluctant to step aside. For example, until he was well into his 90s, Sumner Redstone declared this his succession plan was to never die. The predictable consequence was litigation that engulfed the companies he controlled, including CBS and Viacom. Yet, despite its importance, the question of family-business succession has been neglected by legal scholars. Using King Lear as a framing device, this Article identifies obstacles to succession and shows how legislative initiatives, judicial intervention, and private ordering can facilitate the timely transfer of ownership and control across generations.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Exception Taken: Examining Injustice In Early Modern English Literature

New from University of Toronto Press: Taking Exception to the Law: Materializing Injustice in Early Modern English Literature (Donald Beecher, Travis DeCook, Andrew Wallace, and Grant Williams, 2015).

Taking Exception to the Law explores how a range of early modern English writings responded to injustices perpetrated by legal procedures, discourses, and institutions. From canonical poems and plays to crime pamphlets and educational treatises, the essays engage with the relevance and wide appeal of legal questions in order to understand how literature operated in the early modern period.

Justice in its many forms – legal, poetic, divine, natural, and customary – is examined through insightful and innovative analyses of a number of texts, including The Merchant of Venice, The Faerie Queene, and Paradise Lost. A major contribution to the growing field of law and literature, this collection offers cultural contexts, interpretive insights, and formal implications for the entire field of English Renaissance culture.

Donald Beecher is Professor, Department of English at Carleton University.
Travis DeCook is Associate Professor, Department of English at Carleton University.
Andrew Wallace is Associate Professor, Department of English at Carleton University.
Grant Williams is Associate Professor, Department of English at Carleton University.

Copy provided by Chris Reed, publicist, University of Toronto Press.

The book includes the following essays:

Grant Williams, Law and the Production of Literature: An Introductory Perspective

Bradin Cormack, Paper Justice, Parchment Justice: Shakespeare, Hamlet, and the Life of Legal Documents

Tim Stretton, Conditional Promises and Legal Instruments in the Merchant of Venice

Virginia Lee Strain, The "Snared Subject" and the General Pardon Statute in Late Elizabethan Coterie Literature

Debora Shuger, The Prison Diaries of Archbishop Laud

David Stymeist, Criminal Biography in Early Modern News Pamphlets

Barbara Kreps, Two-Sided Legal Narratives: Slander, Evidence, Proof, and Turnarounds in Much Ado About Nothing

Elizabeth Hanson, No Boy Left Behind: Education and Distributive Justice in Early Modern England

Judith Owerns, Warding Off Injustice in Book Five of The Faerie Queene

John D. Staines, Torture and the Tyrant's Injustice from Foxe to King Lear

Elliott Visconsi, The Literatures of Toleration and Civil Religion in Post-Revolutionary England

Paul Stevens, Obnoxious Satan: Milton, Neo-Roman Justice, and the Burden of Grace


 

Cloth

ISBN 9781442642010

Published Jan 2015

$70.00