This new Harvard Law School Forum post: "Building a Sustainable and Competitive Economy: An Examination of Proposals to Improve Environmental, Social, and Governance Disclosures" reiterates (sans footnotes) Patomak Global Partners CEO (former SEC Commissioner) Paul Atkins' July 10th testimony before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship & Capital Markets. In addition to summarizing several specific legislative proposals on ESG disclosure, the post instructively recaps the history of and bases for our disclosure framework's materiality standard, and addresses each of the various proposals in that context. The proposals covered include the "ESG Disclosure Simplification Act," "The Shareholder Protection Act," "Corporate Human Rights Risk Assessment, Prevention, and Mitigation Act of 2019," "Corporate tax disclosure bill," and the "Climate Risk Disclosure Act of 2019."
See our prior report: "House Capital Markets Holds ESG Hearing," which includes links to each of these draft proposals/bills, as well as the archived hearing webcast. This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!