The Law of Quitting

<p><span>Throughout life, people enter countless positions of authority and trust in relation to one another and society at large. These positions include, among many others, being a public official, being a corporate director, and being an employee. Law announces prerequisites for starting such positions, as well as incumbents’ rights and obligations once in them. But no office holds forever. Indeed, incumbents often choose to exit positions before they would otherwise end by expiration, removal, or death. Yet law governs such voluntary relinquishment—often called “resignation” or, more generically, “quitting”—largely as afterthought. That is, law expansively attends how positions of authority and trust are obtained and held. It pays less attention to how they are given up.</span></p> <p><span>This Article, however, refocuses on quitting as a socially and legally momentous act. Oft times, quitting harms principals or even a whole community, such as when a top-performing employee leaves for another job or when a beloved teacher retires. Good for the quitter, but perhaps not for those left behind. Under some circumstances, quitting can even be <i>wrongful</i>, as when a politician accepts a bribe to resign or a lawyer abandons a client. In approaching those kinds of harms, the Article articulates a law of quitting that synthesizes the act and its significance across social contexts. In so doing, it theorizes quitting as the mixed exercise of public, fiduciary, proprietary, and personal power.</span></p> <p><span>&nbsp;</span><span>This theorization in turn invites reconsideration of when, if ever, quitting should be constrained, or even </span><i>prohibited</i><span>,</span><i> </i><span>to compensate costs it imposes on others or for its intrinsic wrongfulness. The Article tackles this question in efficiency terms by observing how law can balance an agent’s right to quit against quitting’s externalities. Other times, the normative interests of principals or the public might justify outright prohibition on exit. These points, in turn, guide when quitting is proper—whether by a federal judge, a corporate fiduciary, a lawyer, or a high schooler at a part-time job—and when law should intervene.</span></p>