Sustainability disclosure is at an impasse. Today’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure is not delivering the decision-useful information financial markets need, yet the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) so far has not taken steps to formalize sustainability disclosure. Prof. Jill E.
As we have come to expect from Prof. Jill Fisch, her recent article entitled Making Sustainability Disclosure Sustainable introduces a novel and thoughtful policy proposal on a matter of critical importance to investors. In short, she suggests a new sustainability discussion and analysis (SD&A) section within the corporate annual report. In their SD&A, companies would be required to identify and explain the three sustainability issues most significant to their operations.
In her Making Sustainability Disclosures Sustainable article, Prof. Jill E. Fisch proposes creating a Sustainability Discussion and Analysis (SD&A) section to expressly obligate reporting companies to disclose their three most significant sustainability issues in annual reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Professor Fisch posits that the proposed SD&A, as a workable first step in mandating sustainability disclosures, would provide comparability and reliability to reports that are currently difficult to compare and which may vary in reliability.
The extent to which corporations should incorporate sustainability objectives into their operational decisionmaking is highly contested, as is the relationship between societal impact and economic value. At the same time, issuers are incorporating sustainability considerations into their business operations in response both to investor demands and to the claim that sustainable business practices lead to improved economic performance.
This article highlights the results of the Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review (ELPAR) article selection process and reports on the environmental legal scholarship for the 2018-2019 academic year, including the number of environmental law articles published in general law reviews versus environmental law journals, and the topics covered in the articles.
A district court denied the U.S. government summary judgment in a lawsuit concerning California's cap-and-trade agreement with Quebec. The government argued the agreement was conflict preempted by the foreign affairs doctrine because it created an obstacle to the effectuation of the Global Climate P...
The Third Circuit reinstated a lawsuit concerning noxious odors emanating from a landfill in Pennsylvania. A proposed class of residents living within a 2.5-mile radius of the landfill brought public and private nuisance claims, arguing the odors and other air contaminants interfered with the use an...