He is a leading advocate of Director Primacy in corporate governance, and has written numerous law review articles on the subject.
[1] In 2008, Directorship Magazine named Bainbridge one of the 100 most influential people in the field of corporate governance.
[4][5] Director primacy is a theory of the firm that was introduced by Bainbridge in an article in Northwestern University Law Review in 2003 (Vol 97 No 2).
He argues that traditional firm theory is based on a false premise that the board's authority derives from the owners.
However, they are subject to overarching fiduciary responsibility which aligns their required actions with a shareholder wealth maximization principle.