Washington and Lee law professor Christopher Bruner presented his recent work on corporate fiduciary duties at the 2013 Fiduciary Law Workshop hosted by Notre Dame Law School on March 8th.
The Workshop, which included scholars from the United States and Canada, featured papers examining the application of fiduciary principles to a number of legal fields and explored the potential for a distinct, overarching field of “fiduciary law.” Professor Bruner’s paper questioned whether the duty of care owed by corporate directors ought to be conceptualized as “fiduciary” in nature, contrasting the U.S. approach with that of other common-law countries such as Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, which tend to describe the duty of loyalty as the sole duty truly unique to fiduciaries.
