Senator Charles Schumer’s plan to enact a “Shareholder Bill of Rights” and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s shareholder access proposal show the harm that can come from crisis lawmaking. These proposals are misplaced populist attempts to regulate quickly amid the disarray. But shareholder rights is an issue that had almost nothing to do with the financial collapse, and threatens, in the long run, to hobble the corporate governance system that built American industry.

In the first place, shareholders are hardly an oppressed class. The beneficiaries of shareholder access rules will be the pension funds and mutual funds who hold billions of dollars of corporate stock. True, they hold it on behalf of ordinary Americans, but the managers of these funds have their own interests that often conflict with those of their beneficiaries. Managers thrive by increasing their portfolios’ value. That is a hard thing to do and it takes time. So for years fund managers have increased their pay by putting pressure on corporate managers to increase short-term stock prices at the expense of long-term business health. Doing business that way puts jobs and sustainable industry at risk, now and in the future.