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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

Below is a call for papers that I received by e-mail earlier today.  

RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM: CALL FOR PAPERS

Law and Ethics of Big Data

April 17 & 18, 2015

Indiana University- Bloomington, IN.

Abstract Submission Deadline: January 17, 2015

A research colloquium, “Law and Ethics of Big Data,” co-hosted by Professor Angie Raymond of Indiana University and Janine Hiller of Virginia Tech, is sponsored by the Center for Business Intelligence and Analytics in the Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech; the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University; and the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions at Indiana University.

Up to six invitations for research presentation slots will be extended based on this call for papers. In order to receive consideration, researchers are invited to submit an abstract by January 17, 2015.

The following announcement comes to us from Alicia Plerhoples (Georgetown).  The 14th annual transactional clinic conference will be held at UMKC School of Law in Kansas City, Missouri and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is serving as a host partner. Proposals are due by December 15, 2014 and more information about the conference is available after the break.

14TH ANNUAL TRANSACTIONAL CLINICAL CONFERENCE

CALL FOR PROPOSALS, PAPERS, & PANELISTS

Teaching and Writing Methods of the Transactional Clinician

This year’s conference theme is Teaching and Writing Methods of the Transactional Clinician. The conference will have two tracks: (1) a “Nuts & Bolts” Teacher Workshop and (2) a “Pen & Paper” Scholarship Workshop. The Planning Committee seeks proposals for (1) presentations, (2) papers, and (3) panelists as outlined below.   

256px-Alison_Lundergan_Grimes

(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, by Patrick Delahanty from Louisville, United States)

Alison Lundergan Grimes and I both graduated from Rhodes College, a small liberal arts college in Memphis, TN. I have not spoken to Alison since college, so I was surprised to see her mentioned on CNN a number of weeks ago as the democratic nominee for U.S. Senator from Kentucky. Since then, she has been in the news quite a bit. She will face Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in what has turned into one of the hotter Senate races this year.    

Even in college I did not know Alison well, but we did take a public speaking class together. Alison was the type of student who was often in a suit and pearls in class, while I wore flip flops year-round and whatever wrinkled, Goodwill-purchased clothes were the most clean. She was a Chi Omega (easily the most refined group on campus), and I was a part of the football team for all four years (if there was a rowdier group on campus than the football team, it was the rugby club, which I joined because my playing time on the football team was…

Last night (actually this morning around 1 a.m.), I returned to Nashville after a delayed connection on my way back from an excellent conference at Seattle Pacific University. The conference was hosted by SPU’s Center for Integrity in Business.

I was only in Seattle for about 48 hours, but the trip was well worth it. As I have mentioned before, there isn’t a good substitute for meeting people in person. Seattle Pacific University gathered an excellent, diverse group of practitioners and academics from various disciplines to discuss topics at the intersection of faith and social enterprise. I may write more about the conference later, but am pretty wiped out right now after limited sleep, catching up, and teaching today.  

While I seem to always get at least one delayed flight when I travel, I do not mind traveling because I love the quiet time on the plane or the car. (With an 18-month old son at home “quiet” is relatively rare in my life.) Almost always, I can finish at least one full book on the airplane on a trip like this one. This time I read Paul Collier’s The Plundered Planet. I might write…

GSU

Georgia State University has posted a legal studies professor opening in their Robinson College of Business. I graduated from law school at Georgia State University, was a VAP at the law school, and taught a few sections of business law in the business school. It is a wonderful school, right in the heart of Atlanta, with an excellent faculty.

The full business school (legal studies professor) position list is here. The full law school (business law professor) position list is here.

The position posting is below:

GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY:

Robinson College of Business, Department of Risk Management & Insurance

TENURE TRACK and/or NON-TENURE TRACK POSITIONS IN LEGAL STUDIES

GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY invites applications for one or more tenure track and/or non-tenure track appointments in Legal Studies for openings effective fall 2015 in the Department of Risk Management and Insurance at the Robinson College of Business.  Rank is open but we expect to hire at the level of Assistant Professor (tenure track) and/or Clinical Assistant Professor (non-tenure track).

JOB QUALIFICATIONS

Candidates for a non-tenure track position must have significant professional experience as a lawyer, the capability for publishing research in refereed professional or pedagogical journals, evidence of excellence in…

A while ago, I wrote a post decrying multitasking. Travis Bradberry at Forbes has an excellent post discussing some research of multitasking conducted at Stanford University. My favorite takeway: “They found that heavy multitaskers—those who multitask a lot and feel that it boosts their performance—were actually worse at multitasking than those who like to do a single thing at a time.”

There has been much discussion recently about the SEC’s use of administrative proceedings, rather than court proceedings, for enforcement purposes. Both Peter Henning  and Gretchen Morgenson  have addressed the issue in the New York Times. And Jay Brown at Race to the Bottom has devoted several posts to the issue. See here,  here,  here, and here. (This final post claims to be part 5, but I believe this was a numbering error.)  .

I do not want to rehash that discussion, but I do want to bring your attention to an excellent new book I have been reading, Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, by Philip Hamburger.  Hamburger is a Columbia Law School professor who specializes in constitutional law and history. The book is an extensive examination of the history of administrative legislation and adjudication in England and America, going back to the Magna Carta. He constructs a convincing argument that current administrative practice is inconsistent with both English and American history and practice.

This is not beach reading. The book is well-written, but the arguments and the history are complex and require serious thought. It is, however, worth the effort. The book is…

The Delaware Supreme Court has held that fairness review in duty of loyalty cases has two elements: fair dealing and fair price. Weinberger v. UOP, Inc., 457 A.2d 701 (1983). Fair dealing focuses on process: questions such as “when the transaction was timed, how it was initiated, structured, negotiated, disclosed to the directors, and how the approvals of the directors and the stockholders were obtained.” 457 A.2d at 711. Fair price focuses on the consideration paid or received in the transaction.

Weinberger says that the two elements of fairness must be considered together, that “the test for fairness is not a bifurcated one between fair dealing and fair price.” Id. But, of course, damages will be measured against a fair price. If that’s the case, I ask my students, does fair dealing really make any difference as long as the price is fair?

A Delaware Court of Chancery opinion, In Re Nine Systems Corporation Shareholders Litigation,  (Del. Ch. Sept. 4, 2014), recently dealt with that issue.  Vice Chancellor Noble concluded that the procedure followed by the company was unfair, so the element of fair dealing was not met. He decided that the price was fair but, considering…

The world can rest easy; a policy debate has been resolved. Leonardo DiCaprio says climate change is real. I was waiting to see what Jennifer Lawrence and Ben Affleck have to say, but I guess Leonardo DiCaprio is good enough for me.

Seriously, why should anyone care what an actor or any other celebrity has to say about scientific issues? DiCaprio’s position on climate change–yes or no–should have no effect on anyone’s beliefs.

But, if you think opinions like this really do matter, here are some new law review articles that might change your views on business law issues:

Ryan Gosling, Director Primacy is Wrong: A Reply to Professor Bainbridge

Jennifer Lawrence, Rethinking General Solicitation in Private Placements

Hugh Jackman, Director Liability in Hostile Takeovers

And, finally, one you should really pay careful attention to:

Steve Bradford, Why String Theory is Wrong.

In July, I blogged about the irrelevance of law reviews. Here’s more evidence.

I spoke at a symposium on crowdfunding in late March and submitted my article, Shooting the Messenger: The Liability of Crowdfunding Intermediaries for the Fraud of Others, to the law review in late June. The editor-in-chief recently informed me that the edited article would be available for my review sometime in November, and that it should be published in March of 2015.

In the meantime, the article is accumulating downloads on SSRN, the Social Science Research Network. By the time it’s published, most of the people who are most interested in the topic will have already read it. The law review will provide a published archive that people can cite to, but that’s about it.