On October 9, the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a symposium on “Boardroom Legacy.” A unique feature of the symposium is its substantial focus on corporate governance history, policy, law, craft, and practice through the lens of writings authored by Sidney J. and John L Weinberg, a father and son pair engaged in and with corporate governance. John L. Weinberg provided founding funding for the Weinberg Center, which bears his name. I am honored to be among the invited symposium presenters.

Presenters were invited to write book chapters on matters of boardroom legacy within their areas of interest and expertise. The chapters will be collected in a book entitled Boardroom Legacy: The Weinbergs of Goldman Sachs and the Evolution of Corporate Governance (to be published, as noted below, by the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance in 2026). I recently posted my contribution, Board Leadership, to SSRN. You can find it here. The abstract is pasted in below.

Corporate board leadership, though perhaps ill-defined, is grounded in the managerial authority and related duties and responsibilities of the board of directors under applicable state law.  However, an inspection of the board’s roles and structures relative to that authority—taken together with the practical reality that the board, as a collective decision-making body, is populated with directors who bring individualized attributes and approaches to their task—reveals that board leadership is about much more.  It is multifaceted, operating on different levels.  The directors lead the board, and the board leads the corporation in its complex relationships with internal and external constituents.  

This book chapter explores the board of directors and its members as leaders using law and the literature of leadership as generalized reference points.  The analysis is further supported by citations to John L. Weinberg’s thesis entitled: Status and Functions of Corporate Directors  (Princeton Thesis 1948) and related writings authored by his father, Sidney J. Weinberg,  The chapter is written for, and forthcoming in, Boardroom Legacy: The Weinbergs of Goldman Sachs and the Evolution of Corporate Governance (John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, forthcoming 2026).

Larry Cunningham, Director of the Weinberg Center, has posted the first part of John Weinberg’s thesis on SSRN here. It has been fun to read this work in light of John Weinberg’s later leadership of Goldman Sachs–a firm his father also led. Many of the issues addressed in the thesis still resonate today. You may find it of interest.

If you are on the region on October 9, you may want to attend the symposium, which is being held at the University of Delaware’s John M. Clayton Hall. You can register here. The schedule for the day is available at the same link.