This is just to give everyone a “heads up” on a symposium being held this fall (Friday, October 21 and Saturday, October 22) to honor Lyman Johnson and David Millon. The symposium is being sponsored by the Washington & Lee Law Review (which will publish the papers presented), and I am thrilled to be among the invited speakers. I will have more news on the symposium and my paper for it as the date draws nearer. But I wanted everyone to know about this event so that folks could plan accordingly if they want to attend. I understand Lexington, Virginia is lovely in late October . . . . Actually, it’s always been lovely when I have been up there! And the honorees and contributors are a stellar group (present company notwithstanding). I hope to see some of you there.
Monday Business Law Fun: Goldilocks, Consumer Protection, and Over-Caffeinating
[Please keep in mind as you read this post that my daughter is a Starbucks partner. Any pro-Starbucks bias in this post is unintended. But you should factor in my affiliation accordingly.]
Maybe it’s just me, but the publicity around the recent suit against Starbucks for putting too much ice in their iced beverages made me think of Goldilocks and her reactions to that porridge, those chairs, and those beds. First it was McDonald’s, where the coffee was too hot. Now it’s Starbucks, where the coffee is too cold–or, more truthfully, is too watered down from frozen water . . . . (And apparently I missed a Starbucks suit earlier this year on under-filing lattes . . . .)
Different types of tort suits, I know. I always felt bad about the injury to the woman in the McDonald’s case, although the fault issue was truly questionable. The recent Starbucks case just seems wrong in so many ways, however. This is a consumer dispute that is best addressed by other means. I admit to believing this most recent suit is actually an abuse of our court system.
How might a customer who is truly concerned about a substandard beverage attempt to remedy the wrong?
Josephine Sandler Nelson on Volkswagen
Thought Josephine Sandler Nelson’s recent Oxford Business Law Blog post on Volkswagen might be of interest to our readers. It is reposted here with permission.
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Fumigating the Criminal Bug: The Insulation of Volkswagen’s Middle Management
New headlines each day reveal wide-spread misconduct and large-scale cheating at top international companies: Volkswagen’s emissions-defeat devices installed on over eleven million cars trace back to a manager’s PowerPoint from as early as 2006. Mitsubishi admits that it has been cheating on emissions standards for the eK and Dayz model cars for the past 25 years—even after a similar scandal almost wiped out the company 15 years ago. Takata’s $70 million fine for covering up its exploding air bags in Honda, Ford, and other car brands could soon jump to $200 million if a current Department of Justice probe discovers additional infractions. The government has ordered Takata’s recall of the air bags to more than double: one out of every five cars on American roads may be affected. Now Daimler is conducting an internal investigation into potential irregularities in its exhaust compliance.
A recent case study of the 2015-16 Volkswagen (‘VW’) scandal pioneers a new way to look at these scandals
Institute for Law Teaching and Learning 2016 Summer Conference: Real-World Readiness
The Institute for Law Teaching and Learning 2016 summer conference is focusing on “the many ways that law schools are preparing students to enter the real world of law practice.” The conference is being held at Washburn University School of Law. The agenda and registration information are available here.
Commencement Speeches and Ordinary Work
It is commencement season – our commencement at Belmont University is tomorrow. Commencement season means commencement speeches. Commencement speeches often comes with an extra helping of cliché advice. If I had to guess, no piece of cliché advice is more common in commencement speeches than “follow your passion in your career.”
For example, in Steve Job’s famous Stanford commencement speech he said:
You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
Jim Carey, in an otherwise pretty original and somewhat odd commencement speech, included some of the cliché “follow your passion” advice when he said:
My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that was possible for him, and so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant, and when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job and our
Keynote Speakers Announced for Emory Law Conference on Transactional Law and Skills
I am looking forward to attending and presenting at Emory University School of Law’s upcoming conference (June 10-11) focused on the art and science of teaching transactional law and skills. I received word yesterday from Sue Payne, the Executive Director of Emory Law’s Center for Transactional Law and Practice, that the keynote speakers for the conference are “the dynamic duo of Martin J. Katz and Phoenix Cai will deliver a keynote address entitled – ‘Encouraging this Particular Form of (Very Fun) Madness – Roles for Deans and Faculty Members.'” The notice se sent to me on the keynote speakers offers the following information about Professors Katz and Cai and the conference as a whole:
Marty Katz is Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law. Under his leadership, Denver Law developed and implemented a major strategic plan that included initiatives in experiential learning and specialization. He is a founding board member of Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers, a national consortium of law schools that serve as leaders in the experiential education movement. Dean Katz’s recent publications include “Facilitating Better Law Teaching – Now” (Emory Law Journal) and “Understanding the Costs of Experiential Legal Education” (Journal of Experiential Learning).
Phoenix Cai is
Calling All Secondary Securities Market Aficionados! A Little Help?
What factors generate a healthy secondary market in securities? That is my question for this week. I have found myself struggling with this question since I was first called by a reporter writing a story for The Wall Street Journal about a work-in-process written by one of our colleagues, Seth Oranburg (a Visiting Assistant Professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law). The article came out yesterday (and I was quoted in it–glory be!), but the puzzle remains . . . .
Secondary securities markets have been hot topics for a while now. I followed with interest Usha Rodrigues’s work on this paper, for example, which came out in 2013. Yet, that project focused on markets involving only accredited investors.
Seth’s idea, however, is intended to prime a different kind of secondary market in securities: a trading platform for securities bought by the average Joe (or Joan!) non-accredited investor in a crowdfunded offering (specifically, an offering conducted under the CROWDFUND Act, Title III of the JOBS Act). [Note: I will not bother to unpack the statutory acronyms used in that last parenthetical expression, since I know most of our readers understand them well. But please comment below or message me if you need help on that.] Leaving aside one’s view of the need for or desirability of a secondary market for securities acquired through crowdfunding (which depends, at least to some extent, on the type of issuer, investment instrument, and investor involved in the crowdfunding), the idea of fostering a secondary securities market is intriguing. What, other than willing buyers and sellers and a facilitating (or at least non-hostile) regulatory environment, makes a trading market in securities?
B Lab and HB2
Earlier this month, B Lab, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that oversees the certification of B corps, announced that it will move its October 2016 retreat from North Carolina because of North Carolina’s controversial House Bill 2 (“HB2”).
In an April 12 e-mail to “Friends of the B Corp Community,” the B Lab team wrote:
Standing for inclusion, the global B Corp community has decided to relocate the 2016 B Corp Champions Retreat and related events from North Carolina in light of the newly-enacted State law HB2 which limits anti-discrimination protections, particularly for members of the LGBT community.
Immediately, B Lab will work with the North Carolina B Corp community and others to get HB2 off the books and make North Carolina more inclusive and business-friendly.
B Lab also linked to this longer statement in that e-mail.
The Model Benefit Corporation Legislation and the laws following the Model require that a third-party standard be used by benefit corporations to measure their social and environmental impact. B Lab’s standard is currently the most popular standard, but it is not required or even mentioned by the benefit corporation statutes. Allowing for various third-party standards helps prevent the benefit corporation law from being
Congratulatons to the Newly Appointed Dean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University!
Although other outlets in the blogosphere (including the blog he founded, The Conglomerate) beat us to the punch by a few weeks (see, e.g., here and here), I want to take time out today to congratulate D. Gordon Smith, currently Glen L Farr Professor of Law at BYU Law, on his appointment as Dean of BYU Law commencing May 1. (That’s this coming Sunday!)
I have had the privilege of working with Gordon a number of times over the years (perhaps most notably in the formation and leadership of the AALS Section on Transactional Law and Skills and with The Conglomerate), and he is a consummate professional. He represents his institution impeccably as a scholar and servant of the academy and the profession. He has great judgment and is a kind, considerate soul. I know that he will be a great leader for BYU Law.
My only regret is that Gordon will likely have to step back from the many leading roles he has had in pushing business transactional law scholarship forward. His service as a symposium sponsor, conference panel organizer, moderator, discussant, and presenter are so appreciated by me. [sigh]
Nevertheless
Reflecting on the MALSB Conference
Last week I attended the Midwest Academy of Legal Studies (MALSB) Conference in Chicago, IL. MALSB is one of the 12 regional associations of legal studies professors in business schools that has an annual conference. The Academy of Legal Studies of Business (ALSB) is the national association and the annual national conference is similar to AALS.
Given that I started my academic career at a law school, and still attend some law school professor conferences, I notice differences between law school and business school legal studies professor conferences. While there are plenty of similarities between the conferences, I note some of the differences below.
Pedagogy Presentations. While law school professor conferences do usually address pedagogy in a few panels, the business school legal studies conferences I have attended seem to have a much stronger emphasis. For example, I think the regional and national ALSB conferences tend to have 30%+ of the presentations dedicated to pedagogy. Many of the business school legal studies conferences have master teacher competitions as well, where finalists present their teaching ideas or cases to the audience and a winner is chosen by vote. I think some of this focus on pedagogy is because a fair number of business school legal studies