Abstract
This Essay introduces a novel private ordering solution to facilitate corporate investments in pro-social and environmental initiatives: Green dividends. Green dividends are an optional increase in shareholder dividends that are returned to the company to be reinvested in environmental initiatives or kept by a shareholder.
Green dividends pose an alternative to the current gridlocked debate that corporations can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and shouldn’t even try to act in pro-social or environmental ways. Turning the common refrains on their head converts each narrative into an element for a successful private ordering solution: authority, accountability, shareholder buy-in, and government- backed enforcement. With Green dividends, shareholder voting establishes board authority to act and shareholder consent. Shareholder voting rules import securities laws’ mandate of complete and truthful information backed up by private rights of action.
This Essay maps Green dividends—first used in Germany—to U.S. corporate law and identifies Green dividends’ potential benefits and pitfalls. The Essay concludes with an extension of Green dividends but acknowledges that Green dividends will not facilitate all pro-social and environmental corporate investments. Green dividends are a tool in a growing toolkit that corporations can continue to expand with private ordering.
Recommended Citation
Anne M. Tucker, Green Dividends: A Case Study in Green Dividends and the Conditions for Private Ordering Solutions, 48 SEATTLE U. L. REV. 519 (2025).
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