It’s a paraphrase, but that’s more or less what Don Langevoort asked yesterday afternoon at the Trends in Business Associations Scholarship session. He was admittedly trying to be provocative, but he posited that there were more good articles published in the 1980s than the 1990s, and more in the 1990s than in the 2000s. Kate Litvak disagreed on the merits, but (in true lawyerly fashion) argued in the alternative that if it were true, it was to be expected as a field matured. There are big ideas early on, and then contributions are mostly incremental.

 If you’re a junior scholar and want to take up the Langevoortian gauntlet, where should you direct your energies? Don had some suggestions: come up with a theory of governmental regulation in financial markets that doesn’t excessively rely on the marketplace or ignore the need for regulation. Look to political science, perhaps new governance concepts wedded to empirical methods. Eric Talley had some other interdisciplinary suggestions for junior scholars, too, framed in an appropriately California-granola fashion (I’m quoting from the powerpoint): “Hug an experimentalist; Hug a political scientist; Hug a psychologist or behavior economist; Group hug: qualitative work and case studies.” Our own Lisa talked about corporate social responsibility trends as a potential avenue of exploration.

There you have it, folks. History (at least, the history of corporate law scholarship) awaits.  Start writing.

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