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Haskell Murray

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Professor Murray teaches business law, business ethics, and alternative dispute resolution courses to undergraduate and graduate students. Currently, his research focuses on corporate governance, mergers & acquisitions, sports law, and social entrepreneurship law issues.

Professor Murray is the 2018-19 President of the Southeastern Academy of Legal Studies in Business (“SEALSB”) and is a co-editor of the Business Law Professor Blog. His articles have been published in a variety of journals, including the American Business Law Journal, the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, the Harvard Business Law Review, and the Maryland Law Review. Read More

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Recently, I published a short piece for the Nashville Institute for Faith and Work (NIFW) about Business Ethics in a Pandemic.

As mentioned there, I have found teaching Business Ethics courses extremely challenging, but important. While law can be unclear, the boundaries of business ethics are even more vague. 

Perhaps it is simply because one of my younger brothers is an English professor, but I have been increasingly drawn to using literature in the teaching of business ethics as a way to grapple with the lack of clarity.

So far, I have used the fiction and poetry of Derrick Bell, Wendell Berry, Octavia Butler, Anton Chekov, Ross Gay, Ursula Le Guin, Cormac McCarthy, Mary Oliver, Ranier Maria Rilke, May Sarton, George Saunders, and Leo Tolstoy. Admittedly, this is a bit of an odd mix, but I think each of these writers have something important to say, even if I do not use each of them every semester. 

I remain open to other suggestions, and I plan to rotate in other authors as I continue to teach our business ethics course. (I also hope to write a few longer pedagogy articles in the law & literature and ethics & literature…

As I have heard many other educators state, this was the toughest semester in my dozen years as a teacher. In my case, it was a mix of difficulties – teaching an overload, representing my colleagues in a heated faculty senate term, and balancing family responsibilities.

Among the most difficult parts was working with students who were struggling more than I have ever seen. To be clear, I was quite proud of my students this semester. Even with a Zoom option, most students showed up in person, engaged with the material, and worked hard. But several students communicated true hardships, and all students seemed to drag more than usual. Typically, I am a stickler for deadlines, but I pushed deadlines back in every class this semester, and I graded with more grace.

It has been a while since Colleen or I had a running post, but today’s track workout felt a bit like this semester. My plan for this morning was 1 mile at tempo pace followed by 8x400m at goal mile race pace. I haven’t been getting great sleep this week so the run started sluggishly. The warm-up and the tempo mile went fine, but I could tell they required…

In 2013, acclaimed short-story writer George Saunders gave a commencement speech on kindness at Syracuse University. The speech went viral, the transcript landed on The New York Times blog, and the talk later became the basis of a book. 

The entire speech is well worth listening to, but the gist is Saunders saying: “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.”

Oxford English Dictionary defines “kindness” as “the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.”

When I think of the profession of law, “kindness,” “friendly,” “generous,” and “considerate” are sadly not among the first words that come to mind. “Analytical,” “bold,” “competitive,” “critical,” and “justice” were the first five words I would use to describe our field. 

As C.S. Lewis reportedly said, “love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness,” but I am not sure love is ever less than kindness. There may be ways, as negotiation theory teaches us, to “be soft on the person, but hard on the problem.” We can tackle injustice with vigor, but be mindful of the people across the tables from us. 

Pre-pandemic, I put a real premium on “tough love” and preparing students for the …

Through today and tomorrow, UNLV Law is cohosting a Corporate Governance Summit with Greenberg Traurig.  Many thanks to Robert Jackson for giving our keynote talk over lunch today.  His talk covered the waterfront, touching on ESG, corporate governance, broker misconduct, and SPACs.

Featured panel discussions include:

  • All about the green: Developments of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues in the boardroom
  • Buy, sell, or hold: What’s a board to do in today’s M&A environment?
  • Diversity, inclusion, and refreshment: The hidden ingredients of successful boardroom governance 
  • Carrots and sticks: Unlocking the power of effective incentive structures in executive and board compensation
  • If you don’t know, now you know: A guide to a board’s role in managing (unexpected) risk in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic
  • Let’s talk!: Maximizing the shareholder relationship and the benefits of shareholder engagement

It’s been great to get together and talk about these issues in person.  Hopefully we’ll be in an even better position next year.

Earlier, I posted a copy of the abstract to my new law review article, Supreme Risk here.  Since that time, I’ve spun out two different summaries of it elsewhere.  The first, you can find at the CLS Blue Sky Blog here.  The other, you can find at the Duke FinReg Blog here.  The two summaries are different, but they’re both great introductions to the article, which has now been placed with the Florida Law Review.

Fortunately, Florida has given me until early October to continue refining the piece.  I’d be grateful for any comments or thoughts on the draft if you’re able to send them my way.

For your reading enjoyment, I’ve posted a new draft, Supreme Risk, to SSRN.  This is the abstract:

While many have discussed the social issues that might arise because of a majority-conservative Supreme Court, one critical consequence of the current Supreme Court has been overlooked: the role of the Supreme Court in generating or avoiding systemic risk. For some time, systemic financial risk has been regulated by a mix of self-regulatory organizations (SROs), such as the Depository Trust Corporation, and federal regulators such as the Financial Stability Oversight Council. However, the Supreme Court’s recent jurisprudence now creates real risk that federal courts will declare keystone SROs unconstitutional because they do not fit neatly into an eighteenth-century constitutional framework.

SROs are under-appreciated regulatory entities comprised of industry members regulating their own industries with deferential oversight from federal administrative agencies. While ordinary civics discussions entirely omit SROs, they play a critical legal and economic roles and exercise enormous power delegated to them by the federal government. Yet as nominally private entities, they enforce federal law and their own rules without abiding by the restrictions imposed on governmental entities, such as providing due process.

This article makes three contributions to the literatures in

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A few days ago, NYU’s Robert Jackson and Yale’s John Morley filed a lawsuit contending that the world’s largest SPAC was actually an investment company and thus subject to the Investment Company Act of 1940.  A copy of the complaint is available here.  The case has also been covered by the D&O Diary and the N.Y. Times.

A few days after the suit was filed, Bill Ackman, the SPAC’s sponsor, announced an intention to return investor funds.  He also took the opportunity to take a swipe at Jackson and Morley:

Why you might ask, would a PSTH shareholder bring such a meritless lawsuit when any shareholder would understand that the mere filing of the lawsuit, and the delays inherent in its resolution, would impair PSTH’s ability to create shareholder and warrant holder value within its remaining term, by interfering with the process of consummating a merger transaction?

While the lawsuit is brought on behalf of a purported shareholder of PSTH, this individual is simply an unwitting prop to enable the academics, and the plaintiff law firms with whom they have partnered, to bring the lawsuit. The two law professors who concocted the legal theory behind the complaint conceded

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Recent news reports indicate that Senator Rand Paul failed to timely disclose his family’s securities transactions.  The Washington Post reported that Senator Paul’s wife purchased stock in Gilead Sciences in February 2020, before the World Health Organization classified Covid-19 as a global pandemic.  The disclosure “came 16 months after the 45-day reporting deadline set forth in the Stock Act, which is designed to combat insider trading.”  Given the reporting at the time about other Senators’ trades, it’s remarkable that Senator Paul’s office did not identify the omission before now.

Functionally, the current system for managing congressional securities trading does not seem to function particularly well.  As I wrote in Salon, “active trading by senators undermines confidence in government and markets.”  I continue to believe that the best approach is one suggested by Greg Shill, simply requiring members of Congress to submit trading plans much like the system for managing securities trading by corporate executives.

Given the apparent disregard some Senators appear to have for the Stock Act, it might be worth, at the very least, amending it to require Congressional Staff to forfeit any gains from purchases or sales which are not timely disclosed.  As it stands…

The University of Kansas School of Law invites applications from entry level and junior lateral candidates for two tenure-track, associate professor positions to begin fall 2022.  We will consider candidates in all subject areas, but are particularly interested in the areas of (1) property and (2) business, corporate finance, and transactional law, as well as candidates whose work engages these subjects in dialogue with other areas of law. Qualified candidates who will contribute to the diversity of our law school community, including a diversity of scholarly approaches, are especially encouraged to apply.

 
Applicants must possess a J.D. from an accredited U.S. law school or equivalent degree, and must demonstrate strong scholarly potential and a commitment to excellence in teaching.  The School actively seeks applications from members of groups that are underrepresented in higher education.

Review of applications begins in August and will continue until the positions are filled. Initial interviews will be conducted via Zoom. We will review candidate materials posted in the AALS Faculty Appointments Register (FAR), and also invite applications from candidates not participating in the FAR. Applications must be submitted online:  

and should include a cover letter, a CV/resume, a…

 

Presented by the John F. Scarpa Center for Entrepreneurship and Law

 

Friday, September 10, 2021

9:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.

Virtual Event

 

Click to Register

 

The John F. Scarpa Center for Entrepreneurship and Law will host the second Future Business Law Professors Conference on Friday, September 10. All visiting assistant professors, fellows, researchers, law clerks, practitioners and others who are considering entering the higher education academic teaching market in business law—including business associations, securities regulation, corporate finance and business ethics—are invited to attend. This year’s conference will be virtual.

Participants will learn more about the business law teaching market, receive advice on how to be a successful candidate and meet future colleagues. Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in mock interviews and get a sneak-peak into the hiring process from current business law faculty. Some will be able to present their job talk paper to leaders in the field and receive feedback.

Faculty from University of Colorado Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, George Washington University Law School, University of Michigan Law School, University of Nebraska College of Law, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Rutgers Law School, Temple University Beasley School

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