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This comes to us courtesy of Rachel Ezrol at Emory Law:

A Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative & Feminism and Legal Theory Workshop Project

A Workshop on Vulnerability at the Intersection of the Changing Firm and the Changing Family

When: October 16-17, 2015
Where: Emory University School of Law

 Registration is FREE for Emory students, faculty, and staff.

http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07eb2ejk3i2e13daef&llr=7da4m4gab

From the Call for Papers:

Theories of dependency situate the limitations that attend the caregiving role in the construction of the relationship between work and family.  The “worker,” defined without reference to family responsibilities, becomes capable of autonomy, self-sufficiency, and responsibility through stable, full-time employment.  The privatized family, created by the union of spouses, is celebrated in terms of a self-sufficient ideal that addresses dependency within its own ranks, often through the gendered assumptions regarding responsibility for caretaking.   The feminist project has long critiqued these arrangements as they enshrine the inequality that follows as natural and inevitable and cloak the burdens of caretaking from examination or critique. The interpenetrations of the family and the firm have thus been understood as both multiple and wide-ranging. Both this system and the feminist critique of it, however, are associated with…

Last week I ventured a few blocks from Belmont’s campus to our neighbor Vanderbilt University Law School for their conference on The Future of International Corporate Governance. 

One of the many interesting papers presented was Independent Directors in Singapore: Puzzling Compliance Requiring Explanation by Dan Puchniak and Luh Luh Lan, both of the National University of Singapore.

The entire paper is worth reading, but I want to share three take-aways with our readers.

  1. “[O]nly a handful of jurisdictions [roughly 7%] have ever adopted the American concept of the independent director (i.e., where directors who are independent from management only— but not substantial shareholders—are deemed to be independent).” (pg. 6)

  2. Singapore adopted an American-style definition of “independent director” in 2001, which did not include independence from substantial shareholders. Despite this weaker definition of independence in a jurisdiction with much more concentrated shareholding than the U.S., Singapore enjoyed relative success through “functional substitutes” that limited the private benefits of control. According to the authors, these “functional substitutes” include social relationships in Family Controlled Firms (“FCFs”)” and legally imposed limits on the controlling government shareholder in Government Linked Companies (“GLCs”). 

  3. Despite relative success with the American-style definition of “independent director,” Singapore

…

We here in Tennessee took a strong interest in the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, since one of the cases being decided was from Tennessee (Tanco v. Haslam). We at The University of Tennessee were especially interested. The plaintiffs in the Tanco case are University of Tennessee faculty members at the College of Veterinary Medicine, located on our adjacent sister campus (for The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture) here in Knoxville. As East Tennessee awaited the Supreme Court’s decision–and in the aftermath of the opinion’s release, the press sought for and found many angles on the case.

Of interest to me, as a business lawyer, was the interaction of the case with local business–existing and potential. As with most things, there were (and are) two sides to this coin. Locally, and nationally, both have gotten some play. For opportunistic business lawyers, both sides present advisory possibilities.

Some press time was spent on what I call the “Sweet Cakes” issue (covered by blogs as well as the traditional press, with my favorite law coverage coming from Eugene Volokh over at The Volokh Conspiracy, including this post). Sweet Cakes is, of course, the now-famous family-owned-and-run Oregon wedding…

I’ve always been eager to do pro bono work. I went to law school with the intent of helping the indigent upon graduation, but then with a six-figure debt load, I went to BigLaw in New York and Miami, and then corporate America so that I could pay that debt off. But even as an associate and as in house counsel, I dutifully accepted pro bono cases. As a relatively new academic, I paid my way out of pro bono for the first couple of years as Florida allows and assuaged my guilt with the knowledge that my payments were going to fund the local legal aid office.

This year, as a condition of attending a family law CLE for free, I volunteered to take a case. I’ve devoted over 70 hours to it thus far, and we still aren’t finished even after today’s marathon 6.5 hour hearing dealing with a motion for contempt and enforcement, modification of alimony and child support, a QDRO (qualified domestic relations order), and a house in foreclosure. The case was complicated even according to my seasoned family law practitioner friends.

As a former litigator and current BA professor, I found that my skills helped…

As a semi-closeted (now “out,” I guess) foodie* and as a lover of “things Brazilian” (including Havaianas flip-flops and Veja sneakers, as well as churrascarias and caipirinhas), I read with interest a recent electronic newsletter headline about a thriving Brazilian chef.  I clicked through to the article.  I loved it even more than I had thought I would.

The article tells the story of an emergent Brazilian chef and restauranteur, Rodrigo Oliveira, and his flagship establishment (Mocotó), as promised.  That was great.  But that was not all.  The piece also told the story of a business run using a “holistic business model.”

Today, Oliveira focuses on his employees as much as his customers. . . .  Oliveira pays for his employees’ part-time education. And their kids’ health care. And daily jiujitsu and yoga classes in the room he built upstairs. It’s a rarely encountered, holistic business model that contributes to his restaurant’s roaring success. . . .

 . . . 

Beneath the street level they’re boring out new dormitories for employees, for a quick nap and shower between jiujitsu, work and class. . . .

He also seems to be attentive to the greater local community beyond his customers…