In a change from the ordinary politics of promoting the supremacy of one party platform over another, this past campaign season aspiring candidates promised bi-partisan cooperation on several key issues. It is interesting to think, though, of what these candidates meant by “cooperation.” Analogizing the promised cooperation to a legal partnership framework, candidates could be interpreted to have campaigned to form bi-partisan political partnerships under which they would owe fiduciary duties of loyalty and care to their political foes. While cooperating under a duty of loyalty and care may sound appalling to the newly elected candidates, imposing legal-inspired fiduciary duties on political partnerships could benefit the American economic and political landscape.
As a brief review of fiduciary duties, the Revised Uniform Partnership Act (RUPA) requires that a partner owes to the partnership and the other partners the duty of loyalty and the duty of care.[1] The duty of care encompasses