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Benjamin P. Edwards

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Benjamin Edwards joined the faculty of the William S. Boyd School of Law in 2017. He researches and writes about business and securities law, corporate governance, arbitration, and consumer protection.

Prior to teaching, Professor Edwards practiced as a securities litigator in the New York office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. At Skadden, he represented clients in complex civil litigation, including securities class actions arising out of the Madoff Ponzi scheme and litigation arising out of the 2008 financial crisis. Read More

Greetings Business Law Prof Blog Readers.   By way of quick introduction, I am a business law professor
at Georgia State University, College of Law in Atlanta, Georgia.  I teach Corporations, Contracts, and
Unincorporated Business Associations, which is a hybrid doctrinal and
experiential class where students learn default rules and negotiate and draft
three agreements.  My research broadly
focuses on the roles, rights, and responsibilities of corporations.  What does that
mean?  It means that I am interested in the
spaces where corporate law bumps up against the rights of individuals or intersects
with society more broadly.  For example,
I wrote about corporate director oversight liability in the middle of the financial
crisis.  I wrote a few pieces on
corporate political spending and speech rights in the wake of Citizens United.  My latest projects have looked at the
millions of Americans who invest in the stock market through defined
contribution plans for retirement savings, becoming what I call citizen
shareholders, and challenge some of the fundamental assumptions about corporate
power balancing mechanisms, shareholder rights and the roles of corporate,
securities and ERISA laws.

In my experience, if I am not writing, I am not reading or thinking about issues the…

The future leadership of the Federal Reserve, at a time when
the Fed has indicated an inclination to change policy and lessen quantitative
easing, is uncertain with the anticipated retirement of Chairman Ben Bernanke
at the end of this year.  At the center
of the debate is whether President Obama should pick Lawrence
Summers or Janet
Yellen, the two front-runners, to replace Bernanke.  The topic has been surprisingly controversial
and received significant play in the mainstream press fueled in no small part
by the spotlight the contenders shine on gender issues.  Lawrence Summers, ended his term as Harvard’s
president amid controversy for his remarks
attributing the gap between male and female advancement in hard sciences to
inherent differences between the sexes. 
(The legacy of his presidency was also marred by a billion
dollar endowment loss due to poor investments under his leadership.)  Janet Yellen is not just a counter point to
Summers; she serves as her own figurehead in this debate.  If appointed, Yellen would be the first
female to lead the Federal Reserve, an important milestone for women. It could
also be a potentially important litmus test for the Obama administration, which
has come under scrutiny for…