He’s worried about the time and money companies spend dealing with shareholder activists — but not of the Carl Icahn variety. In this case, we’re talking activists in the marching-through-streets-waving-placards sense of the word.

Mr. Gallagher, in a speech prepared for a corporate law conference in New Orleans, said the vast majority of shareholder proposals come from individuals or groups with “idiosyncratic and often political agendas” pushing resolutions unrelated to or in conflict with the long-term interests of shareholders. He cited a push to require companies to disclose political spending activities as an example, warning the costs to companies to fight proposals they oppose are significant and borne by all shareholders.

“It is incumbent on the commission to create a regulatory environment that promotes shareholder value over special interest agendas,” Mr. Gallagher, a Republican, said in prepared remarks.

These proposals are not coming from ordinary shareholders concerned with promoting shareholder value for all investors. Rather, they are predominantly from organized labor, including union pension funds, which brought approximately 34% of last year’s shareholder proposals, as well as social or policy investors and religious institutions, which accounted for about 25% of 2013’s proposals. Approximately 40% were brought by an array of corporate gadflies, with a staggering 24% of those proposals brought by just two individuals.

In other words, the vast majority of proposals are brought by individuals or institutions with idiosyncratic and often political agendas that are often unrelated to, or in conflict with, the interests of other shareholders. I find it particularly notable that corporations that donated more funds to Republicans than to Democrats were more than twice as likely to be targeted with political spending disclosure proposals sponsored by labor-affiliated funds.

“All of this isn’t to condemn shareholder activism per se,” Mr. Gallagher says. He sees lots of ways to express displeasure at a company, including selling your shares (or threatening to, if you’re a big investor), voting against the re-election of directors, or suing management for breach of fiduciary duties. “Given these and other strategies, I’m not sure we need shareholder proposals at all.”