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Colleen Baker

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PhD (Wharton) Professor Baker is an expert in banking and financial institutions law and regulation, with extensive knowledge of over-the-counter derivatives, clearing, the Dodd-Frank Act, and bankruptcy, in addition to being a mediator and arbitrator.

Previously, she spent time at the U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Business, the U. of Notre Dame Law School, and Villanova University Law School. She has consulted for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and for The Volcker Alliance.  Prior to academia, Professor Baker worked as a legal professional and as an information technology associate. She is a member of the State Bars of NY and TX. Read More

Virginia E. Harper Ho has posted “The SEC’s Sustainability Imperative” on SSRN.  You can download the paper here.  Here is the abstract:

In 2016, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the first time sought public comment on whether financial disclosure reform should address indicators of firms’ sustainability risks and practices. Securities disclosure reform now appears poised to take a deregulatory turn, and innovations at the intersection of sustainability and finance appear unlikely in the face of new policy priorities. Whether the SEC should take any steps to improve how sustainability-related information is disclosed to investors is also deeply contested.

This Article argues that the SEC nonetheless faces a sustainability imperative, first to address this issue in the near term as part of its ongoing review of the reporting framework for financial disclosure, and second, to promote disclosure of material sustainability information within financial reports in furtherance of its core statutory mandate. This conclusion rests on evidence that the current state of sustainability disclosure is inadequate for investment analysis and that these deficiencies are largely problems of comparability and quality, which cannot readily be addressed by private ordering, nor by deference to policymaking at the state level. This Article…

My Akron Law colleague Camilla Alexandra Hrdy has posted “The Reemergence of State Anti-Patent Law” on SSRN.  You can download the paper here.  Here is the abstract:

The majority of states have now passed laws prohibiting bad faith assertions of patent infringement. The laws are heralded as a new tool to protect small businesses and consumers from harassment by so-called patent trolls. But state “anti-patent laws” are not a new phenomenon. In the late nineteenth century, many states passed regulations to prevent rampant fraud by patent peddlers who aggressively marketed fake or low value patents to unwitting farmers. However, courts initially held the laws were unconstitutional. Congress, courts reasoned, had power under Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 to “secure” patent rights. If states could tax patents or alter the terms on which patents were sold and enforced, this risked destroying a federal property right and nullifying an Article I power. In the early twentieth century, the U.S. Supreme Court finally held that states retained some authority to regulate, and to tax, patent transactions. But the Court made clear that states could never impose an “oppressive or unreasonable” burden on federal rights. The Federal Circuit has completely ignored this…

The following comes to us from Professor Stephen Diamond, Santa Clara University School of Law.

The Santa Clara University School of Law, the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University, the University of Washington School of Law, the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, the Rutgers Center for Corporate Law and Governance and the Business and Human Rights Journal announce the Third Business and Human Rights Scholars Conference, to be held September 15-16, 2017 at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California. Conference participants will present and discuss scholarship at the intersection of business and human rights issues. Upon request, participants’ papers may be considered for publication in the Business and Human Rights Journal (BHRJ), published by Cambridge University Press.

The Conference is interdisciplinary: scholars from all disciplines are invited to apply, including law, business, human rights, and global affairs. The papers must be unpublished at the time of presentation. Each participant will present his/her own paper and be asked to comment on at least one other paper during the workshop. Participants will be expected to have read other papers and to participate actively in discussion and analysis of the various works in progress.

To apply…

Christopher Bruner has posted Center-Left Politics and Corporate Governance: What Is the ‘Progressive’ Agenda? on SSRN. You can download the paper here.  Here is the abstract:

For as long as corporations have existed, debates have persisted among scholars, judges, and policymakers regarding how best to describe their form and function as a positive matter, and how best to organize relations among their various stakeholders as a normative matter. This is hardly surprising given the economic and political stakes involved with control over vast and growing “corporate” resources, and it has become commonplace to speak of various approaches to corporate law in decidedly political terms. In particular, on the fundamental normative issue of the aims to which corporate decision-making ought to be directed, shareholder-centric conceptions of the corporation have long been described as politically right-leaning while stakeholder-oriented conceptions have conversely been described as politically left-leaning. When the frame of reference for this normative debate shifts away from state corporate law, however, a curious reversal occurs. Notably, when the debate shifts to federal political and judicial contexts, one often finds actors associated with the political left championing expansion of shareholders’ corporate governance powers, and those associated with the political right advancing…

Responsibilities

The University of Akron’s School of Law invites applications and nominations for the position of Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law & Technology, a tenure-track or tenured faculty position, with an anticipated start date of August 2017.

The Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Technology is responsible for developing, articulating, and implementing a long-term vision for the Center that will achieve greater distinction for the University of Akron’s School of Law. The Director, in coordination with the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, is responsible for implementing the IP curriculum within the School of Law. The Director also manages and supervises the law schools’ special IP degree and certificate programs, and may help propose and create additional new programs in intellectual property for attorneys and other professionals as appropriate. The Director is responsible for the management and coordination of all law school programming in the area of intellectual property law, including programs for both attorneys and academics.

The Director fosters and advances external relationships, including the law schools’ ongoing international relationships with other universities, where those relate to intellectual property and technology. The Director also works with the law schools’ Intellectual Property Advisory Council in…