After the jump, is the program for the AALS Mid-year Meeting on Corporate and Financial Law in Washington, D.C. from June 7-9.  If you register (site restricted) and attend, make sure to stay until the fireworks at the very last panel!

Program

Saturday, June 7, 2014

4:00 - 8:00 p.m.

AALS Registration                                                                                                   

6:00 - 7:30 p.m.

AALS Reception

Sunday, June 8, 2014

8:45 - 9:00 a.m.

Welcome                                                                                                          

Judith Areen, AALS Executive Director, Chief Executive Officer

Introduction

Joan M. Heminway, Chair, Planning Committee for AALS Workshop on Blurring Boundaries in Financial and Corporate Law and The University of Tennessee College of Law

9:00 - 9:30 a.m.

Keynote

Donald C. Langevoort, Georgetown University Law Center

9:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Sessions on Research

Recent appraisals of the state of legal education have raised questions about the value of legal scholarship.  Yet, most law scholars believe that their work contributes meaningfully to important theoretical and policy-oriented discussions-including those involving financial and corporate law.  What is the relevance and overall value of legal scholarship in financial and corporate law in an era of blurred and blurring boundaries? What methodologies, forms of scholarly output, and publication venues most effectively and efficiently reach the target audiences for financial and corporate law scholarship?  This segment of the program focuses on these and other questions relating to research and writing in financial and corporate law as a matter of current and desired future practice. 

Specifically, the segment features a two-part approach to questions involving research in the context of unclear substantive demarcations in financial and corporate law.  The first part is a plenary panel discussion, and the second part is a series of small-group networking sessions.  More detailed descriptions of each are set forth below.

9:30 -10:45 a.m.

Research Plenary Panel

Robert P. Bartlett, III, University of California, Berkeley School of Law

Jill E. Fisch, University of Pennsylvania Law School

Claire A. Hill, University of Minnesota Law School

The prevalence of economic analysis is one element that unites legal scholarship across the many areas of business law.  Scholars in the various business law fields of endeavor (e.g., business associations, securities regulation, financial institutions, insurance) have used other disciplines and methodological approaches to a far lesser extent.  Do we have the right mix of interdisciplinarity to most effectively respond to current challenges involving financial and corporate law?  How, if at all, do traditional legal scholars re-tool to address any perceived need for interdisciplinary research that engages academic disciplines outside their areas of expertise (or areas of expertise in which their knowledge is superficial or outdated)?

This panel explores the capacity of a variety of methodologies and disciplines to enrich the study of financial and corporate law in an era of blurring substantive and regulatory boundaries.  The panel also addresses cutting edge questions and controversies regarding blurring boundaries in particular research traditions.  The panel comprises scholars who use different quantitative and qualitative analytical methods in their work.   The panel is designed to allow these scholars to discuss techniques and tools they use and to yield valuable insights into questions that cut across financial and corporate law, such as the behavior of consumers, investors, financial institutions (and the individuals who work inside them), lawyers, and regulators.

10:45 - 11:00 a.m.                                                                                         

Refreshment Break                                                                                       

11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Research Small Group /Networking Sessions

Michelle M. Harner, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law
Christine Hurt, University of Illinois College of Law
Anne M. Tucker, Georgia State University College of Law

Others to be announced.

This part of the program is designed to offer participants the opportunity to share their thoughts on blurred lines in financial regulation research.  Topics will vary from session to session but may include:  how individual research approaches and methods have changed and are changing; how law academics keep up with emerging research approaches and methods-e.g., where research content is now found and how it is processed; whether (and, if so, how) individuals with different substantive law and research backgrounds "talk" to each other to help bridge gaps; and what optimal work product outcomes look like as substantive and regulatory lines continue to blur. Facilitators will report out the ideas from their sessions.

12:00 - 1:30 p.m.                                                                                             

AALS Luncheon

Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senator for Massachusetts (Invited)

1:45 - 5:00 p.m.

Teaching Sessions

Associated legal and regulatory challenges and changes force us to reconsider our pedagogy and the business law curriculum in very fundamental ways.  Structuring courses and choosing and employing effective teaching tools are, of course, part of the discussion.  But teaching financial and corporate law in an era of blurring boundaries also engages larger issues, such as the role of different types of courses (e.g., clinics, practicums, externships, field placements, simulation courses) and pedagogies in teaching business law courses. Also important are pedagogical methods geared to develop the financial literacy, numeracy, and professional values that students concentrating in financial and corporate law should have when they graduate from law school.  Finally, it seems that it would be beneficial to address the value for law students, if any, in joint degree (e.g., JD/MBA) and advanced degree (LLM, Masters in Law, Juris Masters, etc.) programs and the overall place and prominence of financial and corporate law in the current and future program of legal education in the United States.  The program is designed to involve a significant amount of "show and tell," rather than predominantly focusing on traditional academic presentations.

1:45 - 3:00 p.m.

Teaching Plenary Panel

William A. Birdthistle, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology
James A. Fanto, Brooklyn Law School
Edward J. Janger, Brooklyn Law School
John Henry Schlegel, University at Buffalo Law School
David A. Westbrook, University at Buffalo Law School

This panel, populated with presenters culled from a call for proposals, explores the challenges and opportunities for legal educators in an era of blurring substantive and regulatory boundaries.  A range of possible teaching methods and tools can assist in the task.  But difficult questions exist as to how to best use these methods and tools in individual courses and across the curriculum-in and outside business law teaching.  Course selection and curricular options (including those external to the standard Juris Doctor courses and curriculum) deserve important consideration at both the individual (student and faculty) and institutional levels.  The panel is designed to allow academics specializing in financial and corporate law to discuss these and other issues relevant to educating business law students in light of blurring financial and corporate law boundaries.

3:00 - 3:15 p.m.                                                                                               

Refreshment Break                                                                                       

3:15 - 5:00 p.m.                                                                                              

Teaching Concurrent Sessions

This portion of the program features concurrent sessions on teaching led by law faculty chosen from a call for proposals.  Each session has a different topical focus and is offered twice-once in each breakout period.  Accordingly, each attendee has the opportunity to attend two sessions, each on a different topic.  These sessions are designed to involve significant interaction between the selected discussion leader and the attendees.  

3:15 - 3:45 p.m.

Concurrent Sessions

Consumer Protection Clinicas as a Site for Blurring Boundaries

Bryan L. Adamson, Seattle University School of Law

Teaching Banking Law

Mehrsa Baradaran, University of Georgia School of Law

A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Real Estate Investment and Finance Law

Andrea Boyack, Washburn University School of Law

Teaching the Federal Reserve in Law School: Crossing Disciplines, Paradigms and Vantage Points

Timothy A. Canova, Nova Southeastern University, Shepard Broad Law Center

From the Balance Sheet to Beta: A Hands-On Approach to Teaching Accounting & Finance Concepts

Virginia Harper Ho, University of Kansas School of Law   

3:45 - 4:15 p.m.

Repeat of Concurrent Session Presentations

4:15 - 5:00 p.m.

Report Out

5:30 - 6:30 p.m.                                                                                                       

AALS Reception

Monday, June 9, 2014

9:00 - 10:15 a.m.                                                  

Complexity Plenary Panel

Henry T. Hu, The University of Texas School of Law   

Kristin N. Johnson, Seton Hall University School of Law

Tom C.W. Lin, University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law

Saule T. Omarova, University of North Carolina, School of Law

Modern financial markets, as well as the firms that operate within these markets, have become increasingly complex over the last several decades.  This trend is attributable to various developments, including the accelerating sophistication of technology, the increasing size of firms, the more heterogeneous and sophisticated needs of users of financial services, and the inevitable desire of firms to seek out regulatory gaps.  This ever-growing complexity creates a broad set of new challenges for law and regulation.  For instance, complexity may confound the efforts of regulators to monitor financial markets for systemic risk or to erect rules to prevent or mitigate that risk.  Similarly, it can frustrate the capacity of law to promote more informed consumer and investor protection tools such as disclosure or financial literacy education. Increasing complexity also raises new challenges about the optimal modes of regulation: according to some, it demands greater reliance on regulatory approaches such as self-governance or "new governance," while others argue that it may counter-intuitively necessitate simpler and blunter rules.   Finally, market and firm complexity complicates the targets of regulation, which now consists not only of banks, insurers and broker-dealers, but also shadow banks, hedge funds, and participants in derivatives markets.

10:15 - 10:30 a.m.                                                                                         

Refreshment Break                                                                                       

10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Modern Regulatory Approaches

Historically, scholars have studied law and regulation within a particular substantive area, such as banking, corporate, insurance, or securities regulation. However, modern regulatory approaches frequently require knowledge of multiple topics and raise challenges that cut across different areas of legal study. These two concurrent sessions will feature four approaches to understanding modern regulation, each led by a scholar whose work has been focused in the area. 

Regulatory arbitrage and cost-benefit analysis are issues that cut across many areas of modern regulation. Many costly rules create incentives for parties to transact in ways that are economically equivalent, but lead to differential regulatory treatment. Both regulators and courts increasingly are required to, and do, use cost-benefit analysis to justify new regulation.

10:30 - 11:15 a.m.

Modern Regulatory Approaches Concurrent Session #1

Jordan M. Barry, University of San Diego School of Law (confirmed)

Modern Regulatory Approaches Concurrent Session #2

Yoon-Ho Alex Lee, University of Southern California Gould School of Law (confirmed)

11:15 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Modern Regulatory Approaches Concurrent Session #1

Adam J. Levitin, Georgetown University Law Center (confirmed)

Modern Regulatory Approaches Concurrent Session #2

Dana Brakman Reiser, Brooklyn Law School (confirmed)

12:00 - 1:30 p.m.                                                                                             

AALS Luncheon                                                                                           

Daniel K. Tarullo, Governor, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System, Washington, DC

1:30 - 3:00 p.m.                                                                                              

New Frontiers: Innovation, Competition and Collaboration in International Financial Markets

Wulf Kaal, University of St. Thomas School of Law

Eric J. Pan, Associate Director, Office of International Affairs, U.S. Securities and 

Exchange Commission, Washington, DC

Roberta Romano, Yale Law School

Innovation and the mobility of capital have changed global financial markets in profound and consequential ways. Advances in technology and developments in the infrastructure of financial markets have engendered new levels of interconnectivity. The creation of new financial products, the increasing prominence of market participants such as private equity and hedge funds, and the birth of complex trading strategies (namely algorithmic and high-frequency trading); have permanently altered the landscape of financial markets. Operating in this new frontier, significant financial institutions face historically unparalleled vulnerabilities. The financial crisis of 2008 demonstrated the broad range of concerns that challenge government efforts to regulate financial markets.

Responding to the crisis, authorities propose a diverse array of regulatory reforms. For example, the U.S. Congress and regulators have adopted an aggressive and extraterritorial policy governing domestic and international over-the-counter derivatives, creating a Financial Stability Oversight Council and articulating formal processes to address the insolvency of an international financial market conglomerate. In addition, the highly debated and not-yet-finalized Volker Rule promises to reduce excessive risk taking by systemically important financial institutions and minimize the likelihood of future crises. Other countries' proposed solutions take a different tack, adopting Vickers- and Liikanen-style "ring-fencing" policies. The trend toward diversity in regulatory approaches overshadows central bankers' collaborative efforts to craft, implement and enforce the third round of Basel accords.

The debate over uniformity or diversity in regulation provides a forum for evaluating the merits of these various regulatory approaches and the domestic and international actors who inform the discussion. Questions arising from the debate explore the value of efforts to adopt uniform regulatory approaches; the contributions of international regulatory bodies and trade organizations such as the BIS, the G-20, and IOSCO; the benefits and shortcomings of microprudential policies governing banking institutions; and the limits that political accountability and legitimacy pose for each of the governments whose regulatory policies may heighten or mitigate the potential for future financial crises.

3:00 - 3:15 p.m.                                                                                              

Refreshment Break

3:15 - 4:45 p.m.                                                                                              

Political Dynamics Plenary Panel

Erik F. Gerding, University of Colorado School of Law
M. Todd Henderson, The University of Chicago, The Law School
Steven Ramirez, Loyola University Chicago School of Law
Hillary A. Sale, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law    

Financial and corporate regulation no longer fits within the comfortable regulatory silos so familiar to scholars of previous decades.  The efforts to design and implement new regulatory structures after the financial crisis are taking place in sometimes unfamiliar political cross-currents that reshape prior theories.   This plenary panel will address the political dynamics of financial and corporate law in contexts framed by a series of important questions: Have financial and corporate law become more political (e.g. the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act within 20 months of each other)?  Have the roles of courts, legislators, the president, and independent agencies changed and what should those roles be, (with the Citizens United, Business Roundtable, and American Petroleum cases as recent relevant examples)?  How has the blurred world of financial and corporate law changed? Who are the constituencies to be considered in evaluating these laws? For example, whose primacy should be our focus and is there new space for occupiers, crowds, and those pursuing social benefit enterprises?  Does globalization stress our traditional reliance on state regulation and complicate our existing theories of political economy?

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A friendly notice about the AALS-Mid-Year meeting on "Blurring Boundaries"...

The AALS Workshop on Blurring Boundaries of Financial and Corporate Law will be held June 7-9 in Washington, DC.

The workshop is designed to explore the various ways in which the lines separating distinct, identifiable areas of theory, policy, and doctrine in business law have begun to break down.  The workshop sessions will focus on: research; teaching; complexity; modern regulatory approaches; innovation; competition; and collaboration in international financial markets; and political dynamics.  A workshop objective is to bring together law faculty representing a variety of financial and corporate disciplines, scholarship traditions and pedagogical practices and perspectives. 

The workshop provides a unique opportunity for faculty members to make connections between their primary fields and other fields in financial and corporate law, making it relevant to a broad spectrum of law scholars and teachers.  Law faculty in all business fields should find the workshop useful to their scholarship and teaching.

If you’re interested in attending, check out the program and register online.  

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Dear Glommers,

I have thoroughly  enjoyed my brieft stint on The Conglomerate and I look forward to many fun future exchanges. I have a lot more to say about fair funds and securities enforcement, but my time is up. In case you are interested in learning more about the SEC's compensation effort, I have posted my paper "Public Compensation for Private Harm: Evidence from the SEC's Fair Fund Distributions" on SSRN. I welcome any and all comments. Thank you all.

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The AALS Section on Financial Institutions & Consumer Financial Services and Section on European Law are pleased to invite you to attend their joint program, Taking Stock of Post-Crisis Reforms: Local, Global, and Comparative Perspectives on Financial Sector Regulation, at the AALS 2014 Annual Meeting in New York City, on Friday, January 3, at 10:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

The program will feature three paper presentations:

• Arthur Wilmarth (George Washington University), Citigroup: A Case Study in Managerial and Regulatory Failures, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2370131
• Hilary Allen (Loyola University New Orleans), Why Wall Street Isn’t in Jail: The Unpunishable Moral Failures that Helped Cause the Financial Crisis, and How to Address Them in the Future, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2336678
• Kazi Sabeel Rahman (Harvard University), Managerialism, Structuralism, and Moral Judgment: Law, Reform, Discourse, and the Pathologies of Financial Reform in Historical Perspective, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2368292

Anna Gelpern (Georgetown) and Robert Hockett (Cornell) will serve as panel discussants, and Peter Lindseth (University of Connecticut) will moderate the discussion.

Immediately following the joint program, at 12:15 p.m. on January 3, 2014, The Section on Financial Institutions & Consumer Financial Services will host a luncheon with keynote remarks by Sean Hagan, General Counsel of the International Monetary Fund. 

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Call for Papers

AALS Securities Law Section

2014 AALS Annual Meeting, New York

 The AALS Section on Securities Law invites papers for its program on “Global Securities Fraud” for the Annual Meeting, to be held on January 2-5, 2014 in New York.

Topic Description: The panel will explore the procedural and substantive law, as well as settlement practices, for individual suits, class actions and SEC enforcement proceedings alleging fraud in the events leading up to the financial crisis of 2008 and thereafter. Topics can include, among others, the LIBOR rate fixing by major banks, alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, insider trading, and other scandals.   Participants will explore litigation over securities fraud inside the United States and elsewhere, and it is hoped that at least one paper will address securities fraud from a global perspective.  Papers comparing securities fraud laws in two or more jurisdictions are also encouraged, as are papers focusing only on a single jurisdiction.

Eligibility: Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers. Pursuant to AALS rules, faculty at fee-paid law schools, foreign faculty, adjunct and visiting faculty (without a full-time position at an AALS member law school), graduate students, fellows, and non-law school faculty are not eligible to submit. Please note that all faculty members presenting at the program are responsible for paying their own annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

Submission: 3-4 papers will be selected from this call for papers. There is no formal requirement as to the form or length of proposals. Preference will be given to proposals that are substantially complete papers. However, shorter proposals will also be considered.

Papers will be selected by the Section’s Executive Committee in a double-blind review. Please submit only anonymous papers by redacting the author’s name and any references to the identity of the author. The title of the email submission should read: “Submission 2013 AALS Section on Securities Regulation.”

Please email submissions to the Section Chair Richard Painter at:

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Call for Papers

AALS Joint Program of the Financial Institutions & Consumer Financial Services Section and the European Law Section

Taking Stock of Post-Crisis Reforms: Local, Global, and Comparative Perspectives on Financial Sector Regulation

AALS Annual Meeting, January 3, 2014

New York, New York

    The AALS Section on Financial Institutions & Consumer Financial Services and Section on European Law are pleased to announce that they are sponsoring a Call for Papers for their joint program on Friday, January 3, at the AALS 2014 Annual Meeting in New York, New York.

    The topic of the program and call for papers is “Taking Stock of Post-Crisis Reforms: Local, Global, and Comparative Perspectives on Financial Sector Regulation.” The financial crisis of 2008 was truly a global crisis, and the world continues to face a wide range of post-crisis economic and political challenges. Today, several years after the market turmoil began, both the United States and the European Union are in the midst of major regulatory reforms in the financial services sector. The effects of these financial regulation reforms however, remain unclear. Structural reform in the U.S. is thus far limited to a yet-to-be finalized "Volcker Rule," while in the U.K. and the Eurozone, respectively, Vickers- and Liikanen-style "ring-fencing" remain incomplete if not inchoate. Debate in the U.S. still rages around whether and how smaller "community banks" should be regulated differently from megabanks, while the E.U. continues to debate whether to form a "banking union" at all and, if so, what it might or could entail, given various political constraints. Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Reserve continues to innovate in the realm of monetary policy in the absence of functional fiscal policy, while the European Central Bank moves furtively toward acting as a full Fed-style central bank capable of backstopping sovereign debt instruments and providing real liquidity. Where might these multiple developments be ultimately heading, and what might the Americans and Europeans learn from each other as they grope tentatively forward? What broader implications do they raise for political accountability and legitimacy in a post-crisis world?

Form and length of submission

     The submissions committee looks forward to reviewing any papers that address the foregoing topics. While the preference will be given to papers with a clearly comparative focus, the committee’s overall goal is to select papers that will facilitate discussion of, and comparisons between, American and European approaches to various aspects of financial services regulation. Potential topics include macro-prudential regulation, consumer protection, monetary policy, regulation and supervision of financial intermediaries, structural reforms, and related issues of political accountability and legitimacy.

    Abstracts should be comprehensive enough to allow the committee to meaningfully evaluate the aims and likely content of papers they propose. Eligible law faculty are invited to submit manuscripts or abstracts dealing with any aspect of the foregoing topics. Untenured faculty members are particularly encouraged to submit manuscripts or abstracts.

    The initial review of the papers will be blind. Accordingly the author should submit a cover letter with the paper. However, the paper itself, including the title page and footnotes must not contain any references identifying the author or the author’s school. The submitting author is responsible for taking any steps necessary to redact self-identifying text or footnotes.

    Papers may be accepted for publication but must not be published prior to the Annual Meeting.

Deadline and submission method

    To be considered, papers must be submitted electronically to Saule Omarova at [email protected] and Peter Lindseth at [email protected].

    The deadline for submission is September 3, 2013.

    Papers will be selected after review by members of a Committee appointed by the Chairs of the two sections. The authors of the selected papers will be notified by September 30, 2013.

    The Call for Paper participants will be responsible for paying their annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

Eligibility

    Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers. The following are ineligible to submit: foreign, visiting (without a full-time position at an AALS member law school) and adjunct faculty members, graduate students, fellows, non-law school faculty, and faculty at fee-paid non-member schools. Papers co-authored with a person ineligible to submit on their own may be submitted by the eligible co-author.

    Please forward this Call for Papers to any eligible faculty who might be interested.

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“On The Unavoidable Intersection of Torts and Insurance”

The AALS Section on Insurance Law and the AALS section on Tort Law will hold a program On the Unavoidable Intersection of Torts and Insurance during the AALS 2014 Annual Meeting in New York. The program will feature a panel of leading researchers on the intersection of torts and insurance. Panelists scheduled to participate include: Kent Syverud (Washington University School of Law), Tom Baker (University of Pennsylvania Law School), and Nora Engstrom (Stanford Law School). We are looking to add one additional panelist through this Call for Papers. 

Submissions: To be considered, a draft paper or proposal must be submitted by email to Ronen Avraham, Program Chair, at [email protected], and Jennifer Wriggins, Program Chair, at [email protected]. A proposal must be comprehensive enough to allow for a meaningful evaluation of the proposed paper. Submissions must be in PDF format.

Deadline: The deadline for submissions is Friday, September 6, 2013. Decisions will be announced by Friday, September 27, 2013.

Eligibility: Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit. Faculty at fee-paid law schools; foreign, visiting and adjunct faculty members; graduate students; fellows; and non-law school faculty are not eligible to submit. Papers may already be accepted for publication, provided that the paper will not be published before the AALS meeting.

Expenses: The panelist selected through this Call for Papers will be responsible for paying his or her own annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

Inquiries: Inquiries about this Call for Papers may be submitted to the Program Chairs.

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I will have to return before this meeting, but I wish I could be there for it ...

The Scholarship of Professor Larry Ribstein

    Moderator: Douglas K. Moll, University of Houston Law Center

    Speakers:

    Kelli A. Alces, Florida State University College of Law

    Matthew T. Bodie, Saint Louis University School of Law

    J. William Callison, Partner, Faegre Baker Daniels, LLP, Denver, CO

    Ann Ribstein, University of Illinois College of Law

    Roberta Romano, Yale Law School

    Commentators: Lyman P.Q. Johnson, Washington and Lee University School of Law

    Daniel S. Kleinberger, William Mitchell College of Law

    Jeffrey M. Lipshaw, Suffolk University Law School

    Larry Ribstein was a friend to many and a colleague to all of us in the academy. With his untimely passing, he left behind a pioneering and influential body of work across a vast range of subjects. Our program seeks to honor Larry’s legacy by focusing on his scholarship in the unincorporated area. Our speakers include invited presenters as well as presenters who responded to a Call for Papers on the influence of Professor Ribstein's scholarship.

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Our own Christine Hurt will be featured in the Business Associations section ...

Business Associations and Governance in Emerging Economies

    Moderator: Brett H. McDonnell, University of Minnesota Law School

    Speakers:

    Virginia Harper Ho, University of Kansas School of Law

    Nicholas C. Howson, The University of Michigan Law School

    Christine Hurt, University of Illinois College of Law

    Kellye Y. Testy, University of Washington School of Law

    Commentator: Jodie Kirshner, University Lecturer, University of Cambridge F aculty of Law, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Emerging economies such as China, India, and Brazil play an increasingly important role in the world economy. Companies based in these economies face their own particular set of challenges in corporate governance. In some ways these problems are the same as those faced in developed economies, and in some ways they are quite different. The challenges, and solutions to those challenges, also vary among emerging economies. Panelists will discuss those challenges and how participants in emerging economies are meeting them. Some panelists are drawn from a Call for Papers; other panelists will comment upon those papers and use them as a launching point for a general discussion of corporate governance in emerging economies.

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The Section on Transactional Law and Skills is still emerging, but we have another great program this year ...

Researching and Teaching Transactional Law and Skills in an Increasingly Global World

    Moderator: Brian JM Quinn, Boston College Law School

    Speakers:

    Deborah Burand, The University of Michigan Law School

    John C. Coates, IV, Harvard Law School

    Claire M. Dickerson, Tulane University School of Law

    Juliet M. Moringiello, Widener University School of Law

    Marco Ventoruzzo, Pennsylvania State University, The Dickinson School of Law

    Stephen Zamora, University of Houston Law Center

    The business world is facing continuing challenges related to globalism and cross-border open electronic access through the Internet. Many transactions cross national borders and almost all – including traditional goods and services purchase orders and real property transactions – have international significance. Some legal structures have begun to encompass international business supervision and enforcement efforts, while others remain grounded in traditional nation-state-based regulatory systems. As a result of these changes in the market for business transactions, international and comparative law scholarship has broadened to include a robust and growing business transactional element. All of these changes have increased our challenge as legal scholars and instructors in educating our students in the theory, policy, doctrine, and skills that they will need as participants in the transactional business law setting.

    This two-part panel features (1) two academic paper presentations on international, comparative, or cross-border transactional law topics culled from a Call for Papers, and (2) an expert panel of law teachers commenting on the program theme, implemented in a roundtable discussion format with a moderator, focusing on transactional law scholarship and teaching in this current, dynamic business transactional environment.

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I thought I would highlight a few sessions I will be attending at the AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans. First up, Contracts ...

The Law of Contract or Laws of Contracts?

    Moderator: Thomas W. Joo, University of California, Davis, School of Law

    Speakers:

    Rachel Arnow-Richman, University of Denver Sturm College of Law,

    David A. Hoffman, Temple University, James E. Beasley School of Law

    Robert C. Illig, University of Oregon School of Law,

    Karen E. Sandrik, Willamette University College of Law,

    “There is a story of a Vermont justice of the peace before whom a suit was brought by one farmer against another for breaking a churn. The justice took time to consider, and then said that he had looked through the statutes and could find nothing about churns, and gave judgment for the defendant.” - O.W. Holmes, The Path of the Law.

    This story was meant to ridicule the Vermont justice, but he may have been ahead of his time. This year’s Section program will revisit the perennial and fundamental questions about “contract law” as a legal rubric. Is it preferable to analyze “contracts” as a category, or to disperse contracts into “churn” – like categories, such as sales, consumer protection, employment, family relations, intellectual property, securities, and so on? To what extent does the experience of one type of contract justify generalizations about “contract law”? Conversely, what kinds of contracts implicate context-specific practices, markets, or policy concerns justifying specialized analysis and/or doctrine?

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With the earlybird registration deadline for the AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans two days away, here are two events to put on your calendar:

Friday, January 4th: Joint Program of the Securities Regulation and FInancial Institutions/Consumer Financial Services Section [AALS Code 4160]

The Securities Regulation and Financial Institutions & Consumer Financial Services sections have joined forces to put together a Joint Program on the “The Regulation of Financial Market Intermediaries: The Making and Un-Making of Markets” on Friday, January 4th from 2 pm to 5 pm.

The program will give us a chance to look at the intersection of capital markets and financial institution regulation, a sweet spot that was overlooked until the global financial crisis hit. The program will include a panel of scholars who have been looking at this intersection for quite a while, including, Onnig Dombalagian (Tulane), Claire Hill (Minnesota), Tamar Frankel (Boston University), Donald Langevoort(Georgetown), Geoffrey Miller (NYU), David Zaring (Univ. of Pennsylvania – Wharton School of Business),David Min (UC Irvine and author of How Government Guarantees in Housing Finance Promote Stability) and Kimberly Krawiec (Duke) (Moderator).

The program will also include the following four papers picked from a large response to our Call for Papers:

• “The Federal Reserve’s Use of International Swap Lines,” Colleen M. Baker (Notre Dame);
• “Investment Company as Instrument: The Limitations of the Corporate Governance Regulatory Paradigm,” Anita K. Krug (Univ. of Washington); and
• “The Case for Decentralizing Financial Oversight: A Strategy for Overseeing the Derivatives Industry,” Jeffrey Manns (George Washington Univ.).

Saule Omarova (North Carolina) will moderate the call for papers panel.

Saturday, January 5th: Financial Institutions/Consumer Financial Services Lunch [AALS Code 1413]

Our keynote speaker will be Michael Barr of the University of Michigan Law School.  Professor Barr returned to Michigan after serving as Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Department of Treasury in the Obama Administration.  Professor Barr was one of the architects of the Dodd-Frank Act.  Anna Gelpern (American Univ.) will introduce Professor Barr.  

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Conglomerate readers interested in consumer financial protection should check out the Insurance law Section Program at the AALS Annual Meeting on Sunday, January 6th from 10:30 am to 12:15 pm, which will cover consumer protection issues.  Speakers include:

• Joshua Teitelbaum, Georgetown University Law Center (Moderator); 
• Shawn Cole, Harvard Business School;
• Kyle Logue, University of Michigan Law School;
• Lauren Willis, Loyola Law School (Los Angeles);
• Daniel Schwarcz, University of Minnesota Law School; and
• Orly Lobel, University of San Diego Law School

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If you are going to the 2013 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans in January, put the Financial Institutions/Consumer Financial Services Lunch on Saturday, January 5th in your calendar.  Our keynote speaker will be Michael Barr of the University of Michigan Law School.  Professor Barr returned to Michigan after serving as Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Department of Treasury in the Obama Administration.  Professor Barr was one of the architects of the Dodd-Frank Act.  

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It is not too early to start thinking about the 2013 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans in January. The Securities Regulation and Financial Institutions & Consumer Financial Services sections have joined forces to put together a Joint Program on the “The Regulation of Financial Market Intermediaries: The Making and Un-Making of Markets” on Friday, January 4th from 2 pm to 5 pm.

The program will give us a chance to look at the intersection of capital markets and financial institution regulation, a sweet spot that was overlooked until the global financial crisis hit. The program will include a panel of scholars who have been looking at this intersection for quite a while, including, Onnig Dombalagian (Tulane), Claire Hill (Minnesota), Tamar Frankel (Boston University), Donald Langevoort (Georgetown), Geoffrey Miller (NYU), David Zaring (Univ. of Pennsylvania – Wharton School of Business), David Min (UC Irvine and author of How Government Guarantees in Housing Finance Promote Stability) and Kimberly Krawiec (Duke) (Moderator).

The program will also include the following four papers picked from a large response to our Call for Papers:

• “The Federal Reserve’s Use of International Swap Lines,” Colleen M. Baker (Notre Dame);
• “Investment Company as Instrument: The Limitations of the Corporate Governance Regulatory Paradigm,” Anita K. Krug (Univ. of Washington); and
• “The Case for Decentralizing Financial Oversight: A Strategy for Overseeing the Derivatives Industry,” Jeffrey Manns (George Washington Univ.).

Saule Omarova (North Carolina) will moderate the call for papers panel.

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