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Joan Heminway

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Professor Heminway brought nearly 15 years of corporate practice experience to the University of Tennessee College of Law when she joined the faculty in 2000. She practiced transactional business law (working in the areas of public offerings, private placements, mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, and restructurings) in the Boston office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP from 1985 through 2000.

She has served as an expert witness and consultant on business entity and finance and federal and state securities law matters and is a frequent academic and continuing legal education presenter on business law issues. Professor Heminway also has represented pro bono clients on political asylum applications, landlord/tenant appeals, social security/disability cases, and not-for-profit incorporations and related business law issues. Read More

A U.S. District Court judge sitting in the Northeastern Division of the Northern District of Alabama found the Corporate Transparency Act (affectionately referred to in short form as the CTA) unconstitutional as detailed in a memorandum opinion issued on Friday.  The opinion granted the plaintiffs, the National Small Business United (NSBU) and Isaac Winkles, an NSBA member, their summary judgment motion on this basis.  The accompanying final judgment permanently enjoined the Secretary of the Treasury and other government defendants, as well as “any other agency or employee acting on behalf of the United States,” from enforcing the Corporate Transparency Act against the plaintiffs in the litigation.

Many of us business law profs–and all of our business law practice brethren–have been following the CTA, endeavoring to gain a more comprehensive understanding of its provisions and fashioning advice on compliance.  The CTA, enacted in 2021 and effective as of January 1, 2024, requires nonexempt companies (domestic or foreign corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities formed or, in the case of foreign entities, registered to do business in any U.S. state or tribal jurisdiction) to disclose certain information, including about their beneficial owners, to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), part of…

Check out High-Status Versus Low-Status Stakeholders, an intriguing paper authored by one of our business school brethren, Justin Pace.  In this work, Justin approaches an important, yet difficult, topic at the intersection of corporate governance and the class divide.  The SSRN abstract follows.

The literature on stakeholder theory has largely ignored the difficult and central issue of how judges and firms should resolve disputes among stakeholders. When the issue is addressed, focus has largely been on the potential for management to use stakeholder theory as cover for rent seeking or on disputes between classes of stakeholders. Sharply underappreciated is the potential for disparate interests within a stakeholder class.

That potential is particularly acute due to a (largely education-driven) stark and growing class divide in the United States. There is a substantial difference between the interests of a highly educated professional and managerial elite and a pink-collar and blue-collar working class who mostly do not hold four-year degrees. Despite their smaller numbers, the professional and managerial elite will frequently win out in intra-stakeholder disputes with working class stakeholders due to their greater status, power, and influence.

Because this class divide is cultural, social, and political as well as economic, these…

From friend-of-the-BLPB Jessica Erickson:

The University of Richmond School of Law is looking for a visitor next spring (2025) in the business law area.  Specifically, we are looking for coverage for our Mergers & Acquisitions course, as well as either Securities Regulation or Business Associations. If you might be interested, please reach out to Kristen Osenga, our Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, at kosenga@richmond.edu.  I am also happy to answer any questions about the school and our fabulous students and faculty.

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I have the privilege and honor to be in Detroit today to present the second annual Baiardi lecture at Wayne State University Law School.  Wayne Law is a bit of a second home for me (a status it enjoys with several other law schools).  I have presented at two symposia here (publishing twice, as a result, with the Wayne Law Review).  Also, Wayne Law was the academic pied à terre of Peter Henning, who was a trusted and dear mentor (and an accomplice in reasoning through insider trading and applied corporate governance questions) until his untimely death.

My lecture addresses aspects of a joint project I previewed at the National Business Law Scholars Conference at Tennessee Law last June.  The project is the brainchild of my Tennessee Law colleague Tomer Stein and involves taking a new approach to the ongoing debate about federalizing corporate law.  The talk offers some practical applied thoughts on the project and is entitled “Visioning (Not Advocating or Discounting) Federal Corporate Law.” I undoubtedly will have more to say on this topic as our work on the project progresses.  But if you think of or come across anything you deem relevant to the cause…

POSITION OVERVIEW

Position title: Executive Director of the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy

Salary range: A reasonable estimate for this position is $200,000 to $250,000

APPLICATION WINDOW

Open date: October 30, 2023

Most recent review date: Sunday, Jan 7, 2024 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Applications received after this date will be reviewed by the search committee if the position has not yet been filled.

Final date: Sunday, Mar 31, 2024 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)
Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.

POSITION DESCRIPTION

The Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy (“Institute”) is seeking an Executive Director with substantial practical experience in business law and policy to plan, oversee and execute the work of the Institute. The Institute is, by design, a dynamic one and the Executive Director will have significant opportunity to creatively shape the Institute’s mission and initiatives together with key faculty and leaders at UCLA School of Law. The Institute supports and expands educational opportunities, job-search support, academic scholarship, and policy analysis in business law and tax law. The goals of

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The University of Cincinnati College of Law is currently undertaking a search for a new director of our Corporate Law Center. A description is below.  Hat tip to Kate Jackson.

About the Center

The Corporate Law Center at the University of Cincinnati College of Law was founded in 1987.  Its mission is to carry out  programs related to the education and training of students and others in the field of corporate law.  The Center has historically fulfilled its mission in a variety of ways, including the following: Awarding CLC fellowships to incoming law students, hosting an annual symposium devoted to trending topics in business law, supporting research, coursework, and other academic activities related to corporate law, sponsoring the student-led Business Law Society at the College of Law, supporting the Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic, which provides transactional legal services to start-ups, small businesses, and non-profit organizations; supporting the Patent & Trademark Clinic, which provides intellectual property legal services to individuals and businesses throughout the Cincinnati entrepreneurial ecosystem, and administering the Business Law Concentration for current law students.

Many of these activities continue to be enormously valuable. As part of the creation of a vision and strategic plan, the new

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National Business Law Scholars Conference (NBLSC) 

June 24-25, 2024 

Call for Papers 

The National Business Law Scholars Conference (NBLSC) will be held on Monday and Tuesday, June 24-25, 2024, at The University of California, Davis School of Law. 

This is the fifteenth meeting of the NBLSC, an annual conference that draws legal scholars from across the United States and around the world. We welcome all scholarly submissions relating to business law. Junior scholars and those considering entering the academy are especially encouraged to participate. If you are thinking about entering the academy and would like to receive informal mentoring and learn more about job market dynamics, please let us know when you make your submission. 

Submission Guidelines: 

Please fill out this form to register and submit an abstract by Friday, March 15, 2024. Please be prepared to include in your submission the following information about you and your work: 

• Name 

• E-mail address 
• Institutional Affiliation & Title 
• Paper title 
• Paper description/abstract 
• Keywords (3-5 words) 
• Dietary restrictions 
• Mobility restrictions 

If you have any questions, concerns, or special requests…

I had the opportunity to attend one of the sessions in the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Corporations, Private Ordering, and Corporate Law last week.  The program was co-hosted by Foundations of Law and Finance (Goethe University Frankfurt, Center for Advanced Studies) and Columbia Law School.  Luckily for me, the piece of the program I attended featured Nizan Geslevich Packin presenting a work-in-progress she is co-authoring with Anat Alon-Beck entitled Board Observers: Shadow Governance in the Era of Big Tech.

Although a draft of the paper is not yet posted, here is the SSRN abstract:

This Article examines the rise in corporate governance practice of appointing board observers, especially in the context of private equity, venture capital (VC), and corporate venture capital (CVC). Board observers are non-voting members attending board meetings to gain knowledge and insight. They arguably also provide valuable feedback, an outside perspective, and can even help ensure corporate operations. In recent years, board observer seats – a notion also existing in the nonprofit sector – have become increasingly popular in the for-profit business world, where investors have various market and business justifications for using board observers, including corporate governance considerations, minimizing litigation exposure, navigating antitrust issues, CFIUS regulation…

The University of Chicago Business Law Review recently published an interesting and engaging article written by David Rosenfeld.  The article is entitled “Insider Abstention and Rule 10b5-1 Plans” and is available on SSRN.  The SSRN abstract for David’s article follows.

Company insiders will typically be in possession of material non-public information (MNPI) about their companies. In order to allow insiders the opportunity to trade, the SEC adopted Rule 10b5-1, which provides an affirmative defense to insider trading liability if the trades are made pursuant to a written plan or trading instruction entered into when the trader was not aware of MNPI. Over the years, there has been considerable concern that insiders were abusing Rule 10b5-1 plans by adopting plans just prior to trading, adopting multiple plans, or even terminating plans when they turned out to be unprofitable. The SEC recently adopted new rules designed to curb some of the more abusive practices, but one significant problem remains: while Rule 10b5-1 plans are supposed to be irrevocable, insiders who back out of plans have so far escaped liability under the central anti-fraud provision of the federal securities laws, principally because a violation of that provision requires an actual trade.

The…