Every casual reader of business news knows that JP Morgan Chase & Co. is in a world of legal hurt.  But, it is not alone.  Many other major  financial institutions — Bank of America,  Citigroup, HSBC, Barclay’s, Wells Fargo, UBS, etc. — have their share of big dollar controversies with regulators and private claimants.  The immediate news coverage is focused on the size of financial penalties for the institutions,  on the potential civil or criminal culpability of  bank officials and on the reputational harm to both the bank and its senior officers.

A provocative headline recently topped a CorpCounsel.com story: “Should GCs Be on the Board? GCs Say Yes.”

This former GC says “no.”

The current global—and Congressional—debate about whether to deploy force against Syria for its use of sarin gas on civilians will depend, in part, on whether the reasons for a post-World War I agreement banning the offensive use of chemical and biological weapons continue to be honored.

Corporate Counsel recently ran an article entitled "Bringing Compliance to the C-Suite," based on a Rand Corporation conference of a similar name and previewing a subsequent report-out. The focus of the conference, as reflected in papers presented there and referenced in the article, is that a variety of pressures cause CEOs to act badly or, at the least, to be indifferent to issues of corporate integrity. This is, of course, an important perspective.

One of the dumbest corporate governance issues is whether to split the roles of Board Chair and CEO. That debate is now playing out on the front pages of business sections (print and online) as shareholders will decide next week in a nonbinding vote whether to take the chairman of the board title away from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

The horrific death of more than 900 Bangladesh garment workers in the collapse of a building, following the death of 112 garment workers in a Bangladesh factory fire five months ago, has led, of course, to the inevitable calls for reform. The immediate question is how to ensure structural soundness of factories after the multi-storied Rana Plaza facility--making garments for as many as 30 international retailers--broke apart, burning, suffocating and crushing its workforce. But broader issues of worker health and safety for Bangladesh's 5,000 garment factories have also come to the fore.

In President Obama's second term, the United States has an ambitious and challenging Atlantic and Pacific trade agenda which could significantly alter the architecture of the global economy.

Labor markets have for the past quarter century been at the center of the globalization disputes under the "off-shoring and out-sourcing" rubric. How many jobs were lost at home to cheap labor abroad? What were conditions for those overseas workers?

"After the Supreme Court hears oral argument in the two same-sex marriage cases next week, it could issue a momentous ruling that gay marriage is a constitutional right in all 50 states -- or that it is not," writes Ben Heineman.

..."Moderate justices (read: Kennedy) may hesitate to call same-sex marriage a constitutional right. But these briefs written by military and business leaders may give them a more modest way to strike down the Act."

Henry Luce's titanic magazines -- Time, Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated -- started to decline about 20 years after his death, in 1967. And this downward trajectory was punctuated with the recent announcement that Time-Warner would spin off the remaining Time Inc magazines to survive on their own in the internet era.