Joan Heminway’s post last week about comparative corporate law  got me thinking about international coverage in my own courses. Joan’s post reviewed a book designed for a stand-alone comparative corporate law course, but I’ve been wondering whether we should include more comparative material in the basic business associations and securities regulation courses.

The case for discussing the corporate and securities law of other countries is clear. Capital markets are becoming increasingly global. U.S. companies are selling securities in other countries and U.S. investors are investing in foreign companies. Initially, globalization affected primarily large multinational companies, but with the expanding use of the Internet to sell securities, even the smallest business can offer securities to investors in other countries.

Under the internal affairs rule, it’s the corporate law of the country of incorporation that’s important, no matter where the lawyer is practicing or where the corporation or the shareholder is located. And a company selling securities to investors outside the U.S. needs to consider the effect of other countries’ securities laws. Foreign counsel may be retained to deal with such issues, but shouldn’t the U.S. lawyer have at least a rudimentary understanding of foreign corporate and securities laws and how they differ from U.S. law?

I spend no time on comparative analysis in either my business associations or my securities regulation course.

I could blame the textbook authors. The book I use in Business Associations includes almost nothing about corporate law outside the United States. That’s typical. Franklin Gevurtz has written a wonderful supplement on comparative corporate law, Global Issues in Corporate Law, but business associations casebooks generally ignore comparative issues.

The book I use for Securities Regulation covers the application of U.S. registration requirements and antifraud rules to transactions outside the United States, but it doesn’t discuss foreign securities law. (A prior edition did, but that material was eliminated from the most recent edition.) This book’s approach is also typical. Other securities regulation casebooks cover the extraterritorial application of U.S. law, but offer little or no comparative analysis of the law of other jurisdictions.

The casebook authors ought to do more, but that’s an inadequate excuse. I include a lot of supplemental material that isn’t in the textbook, especially in Business Associations. It wouldn’t be too hard for me to create supplemental material to add a comparative perspective to my courses.

Perhaps this is just one of those areas where I have fallen into the rut of teaching what my professors taught me. My memory may be faulty, but I don’t recall any international coverage when I took those courses 30+ years ago—which is interesting, because my Corporations professor, Detlev Vagts, was a noted international law scholar.

But it’s mostly an issue of time. At most law schools, corporate and securities law is crammed into a few credit hours, unlike constitutional law other, more favored subjects I won’t name. I, like most corporate law teachers, don’t have the luxury of adding topics. It’s hard enough to cram agency, partnership, limited partnership, limited liability companies, corporations, and some securities law into a single four-hour Business Associations course.

Nevertheless, I’m going to review my coverage carefully and see if I can sneak in more comparative materials. In today’s global environment, even students in Nebraska ought to be exposed to at least some foreign corporate and securities law.