Businesses from small farmers to cruise lines are anxiously awaiting President Trump’s policy on Cuba and how/if he will rescind President Obama’s Executive Orders relaxing restrictions on doing business with the island.

If you’re in the South Florida area next Friday March 10th, please consider attending the timely conference on Doing Business in Cuba: Legal, Ethical, and Compliance Challenges from 8:00 am-4:30 pm at the Andreas School of Business, Barry University. The Florida Bar has granted 6.5 CLE credits, including for ethics and for certifications in Business Litigation and International Law. The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust is organizing the event.

As a member of the Commission and an academic who has just completed my third article on Cuba, I’m excited to provide the opening address for the event. I’m even more excited about our speakers John Kavulich, President, U.S. Cuba Trade and Economic Council Inc;  the general counsel of Carnival Cruise Lines;  mayors of Miami Beach, Coral Gables, and Doral; director of the Miami International Airport; a number of academic experts from local universities; Commissioners Nelson Bellido and Judge Lawrence Schwartz; and outside counsel  from MDO Partners, Akerman LLP, Holland & Knight, Greenberg Traurig, Squire Patton Boggs

Later this week, I will head to Indiana to present at and attend a social enterprise law conference at The Law School at the University of Notre Dame.  The conference includes presentations by participating authors in the forthcoming Cambridge Handbook of Social Enterprise Law, edited by Ben Means and Joe Yockey.  The range of presentations/chapters is impressive.  Fellow BLPB editors Haskell Murray and Anne Tucker also are conference presenters and book contributors.

Interestingly (at least for me), my chapter relates to Haskell’s post from last Friday.  The title of my chapter is “Financing Social Enterprise: Is the Crowd the Answer?”  Set forth below is the précis I submitted for distribution to the conference participants.

Crowdfunding is an open call for financial backing: the solicitation of funding from, and the provision of funding by, an undifferentiated, unrestricted mass of individuals (the “crowd”), commonly over the Internet. Crowdfunding in its various forms (e.g., donative, reward, presale, and securities crowdfunding) may implicate many different areas of law and intersects in the business setting with choice of entity as well as business finance (comprising funding, restructuring, and investment exit considerations, including mergers and acquisitions). In operation, crowdfunding uses technology to transform

The following comes to us from Professor Stephen Diamond, Santa Clara University School of Law.

The Santa Clara University School of Law, the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University, the University of Washington School of Law, the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, the Rutgers Center for Corporate Law and Governance and the Business and Human Rights Journal announce the Third Business and Human Rights Scholars Conference, to be held September 15-16, 2017 at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California. Conference participants will present and discuss scholarship at the intersection of business and human rights issues. Upon request, participants’ papers may be considered for publication in the Business and Human Rights Journal (BHRJ), published by Cambridge University Press.

The Conference is interdisciplinary: scholars from all disciplines are invited to apply, including law, business, human rights, and global affairs. The papers must be unpublished at the time of presentation. Each participant will present his/her own paper and be asked to comment on at least one other paper during the workshop. Participants will be expected to have read other papers and to participate actively in discussion and analysis of the various works in progress.

To apply

National Business Law Scholars Conference (NBLSC)

Thursday & Friday, June 8-9, 2017

Call for Papers

The National Business Law Scholars Conference (NBLSC) will be held on Thursday and Friday, June 8-9, 2017, at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law. 

This is the eighth 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 legal academy are especially encouraged to participate. 

To submit a presentation, email Professor Eric C. Chaffee at eric.chaffee@utoledo.edu with an abstract or paper by February 17, 2017.  Please title the email “NBLSC Submission – {Your Name}.”  If you would like to attend, but not present, email Professor Chaffee with an email entitled “NBLSC Attendance.”  Please specify in your email whether you are willing to serve as a moderator.  We will respond to submissions with notifications of acceptance shortly after the deadline. We anticipate the conference schedule will be circulated in May. 

Keynote Speaker:

Lynn A. Stout, Distinguished Professor of Corporate & Business Law, Cornell Law School

Plenary Author-Meets-Reader Panel:

Selling Hope, Selling Risk: Corporations, Wall Street, and the Dilemmas of Investor Protection by Donald C.

Conference information from an e-mail I recently received. 

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The second annual Susilo Symposium of the Susilo Institute for Ethics in the Global Economy will be held on June 15-17, 2017 at Boston University Questrom School of Business.

The event will feature distinguished and varied speakers, including Professor Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School, and site visits at Aeronaut Brewing, Bright Horizons, and Fenway Park, among other exciting area companies.

The Susilo Symposium will be part of a new Global Business Ethics week, which begins at Bentley University from June 12-15 for the Global Business Ethics Symposium and teaching workshop, and then will move to BU for June 15-17.

The event promises an audience of both scholars and practitioners from around the world. All seek to explore and exchange ideas in a unique and interactive forum about the role of ethics in the global economy.

This year’s Susilo Symposium follows the inaugural symposium, which was held in May 2016 in Surabaya, Indonesia. Featuring foremost business, academic, and political leaders, it reflected on “Global Business Ethics – East Meets West.”

What to Expect

The program is directed specifically toward both academics and practitioners. Our hope is that attendees will learn

On Friday, I will present as part of the American Society of International Law’s two-day conference entitled Controlling Corruption: Possibilities, Practical Suggestions & Best Practices. The ASIL Conference is co-sponsored by the University of Miami School of Business Administration, the Business Ethics Program of the University of Miami School of Business Administration, UM Ethics Programs & the Arsht Initiatives, the Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research, Wharton, University of Pennsylvania, Bentley University, and University of Richmond School of Law.

I am particularly excited for this conference because it brings law, business, and ethics professors together with practitioners from around the world. My panel includes:

Marcia Narine Weldon, St. Thomas University School of Law, “The Conflicted Gatekeeper: The Changing Role of In-House Counsel and Compliance Officers in the Age of Whistle Blowing and Anticorruption Compliance”

Todd Haugh, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, “The Ethics of Intercorporate Behavioral Ethics”

Shirleen Chin, Institute for Environmental Security, Netherlands, “Reducing the Size of the Loopholes Caused by the Veil of Incorporation May lead to Better Transparency”

Edwin Broecker, Quarles &Brady LLP, Indiana,& Fernanda Beraldi Cummins, Inc, Indiana, “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Possible Unintended Consequences of Enforcing Supply Chain Transparency”

Stuart Deming, Deming PLLC

RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM: CALL FOR PAPERS

Law and Ethics of Big Data

Hosted and Sponsored by:

The Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Co-Hosted by:

Virginia Tech Center for Business Intelligence Analytics

The Department of Business Law and Ethics, Kelley School of Business

Washington & Lee Law School

April 21st and 22nd 2017

at the

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Abstract Submission Deadline: February 24, 2017

We are pleased to announce the research colloquium, “Law and Ethics of Big Data,” at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, co-hosted by Professor Philip M. Nichols, Assistant Professor Angie Raymond of Indiana University and Professor Janine Hiller of Virginia Tech.

Due to the success of this multi-year event that is in its fourth year, the colloquium will be expanded and we seek broad participation from multiple disciplines; please consider submitting research that is ready for the discussion stage. Each paper will be given detailed constructive critique. We are targeting cross-discipline opportunities for colloquium participants, and the Wharton community has expressed interest in sharing in these dialogues.

A non-inclusive list of topics that are appropriate

The members of Friday’s AALS discussion group about which I wrote last week came to an inescapable–if unsurprising–overall conclusion: the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in the Salman case does little to address major unresolved questions under U.S. insider trading law.  That having been said, we had a wide-ranging and sometimes exciting discussion about the Court’s opinion in Salman and what might or should come next.  I found the discussion very stimulating; a great way to start a new semester–especially one in which I am teaching Securities Regulation and Advanced Business Associations, both of which deal with insider trading law.  I will offer brief outtakes from the proceedings here for your consideration and (as desired) comment.

John Anderson and I framed three questions around which we structured the formal part of the discussion session (which commenced after brief introductory comments from each participant).

  • What, if anything, does the Court’s Salman opinion say by its silence?
  • What, if anything, is left of the Second Circuit opinion in the Newman case after Salman?
  • Is law reform needed after Salman, and if so, should we continue to permit it to occur through further, incremental judicial developments or should reform be undertaken through legislation or regulatory rule-making or guidance?

The

As regular readers of this blog know, I am skeptical of many disclosure regimes, particularly those related to conflict minerals. I am, however, a fan of the Sustainability Accounting Standard Board’s (SASB’s) efforts to streamline the disclosure process and provide industry-specific metrics that tie into accepted definitions of materiality.

Dr. Jean Rogers, the CEO and Founder of SASB, presented at the Association of American Law Schools yesterday with other panelists discussing the pros and cons of environmental, social, and governance disclosures. To prove SASB’s case that investors care about sustainability, Dr. Rogers noted that in 2016, sustainable investment strategies came into play in one out of every five dollars under professional management. She cited a number of key sustainability initiatives that investors considered including the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investments ($59 trillion AUM), the Carbon Disclosure Project ($95 trillion AUM), the International Corporate Governance Network ($26 trillion AUM), and the Investor Network on Climate Risk ($13 trillion AUM).

Despite this interest, SASB argues, investors lack information that equips them with an apples to apples comparison on material information related to sustainability. What might be material in the beverage industry such as water usage for example, may