I have been at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) conference all week.  As usual, there have been too many program offerings important to my scholarship and teaching.  I have participated in and attended so many things.  I am exhausted.

But I know that all of this activity also energizes me.  Once I am back at home tomorrow night and get a good night’s sleep, I will be ready to rock and roll into the new academic year (which starts for us at UT Law in a few weeks).  I use the SEALS conference as this bridge to the new year every summer.

One of my favorite discussion groups at the conference was the White Collar Crime discussion group that John Anderson and I organized.  A number of us focused on insider trading law this year.  John, for example, shared his preliminary draft of an insider trading statute.  I asked folks to ponder the result under U.S. insider trading law of a tipping case with the following general facts:

  • A person with a fiduciary duty of trust and confidence to a principal conveys material nonpublic information obtained through the fiduciary relationship to a third person;
  • The recipient of the information is someone with whom the fiduciary has no prior familial or friendship relationship;
  • The conveyance is made to the recipient by the fiduciary without the consent of the principal;
  • The conveyance is made to the recipient gratuitously;
  • The fiduciary’s purpose in conveying the information is to benefit the recipient;
  • Specifically, the fiduciary knows that the recipient has the ability and incentive to trade on the information or convey it to others who have the ability and incentive to trade; and
  • The fiduciary has clear knowledge and understanding of resulting detriment to the principal.

The question, of course, is whether the fiduciary has engaged in deception that constitutes a willful violation of insider trading proscriptions under Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5.  The answer, based on what we now know under U.S. insider trading law, depends on whether the fiduciary’s sharing of information is improper.  What do you think?  I shared my views and others in the group shared theirs.  I may have more to say on this problem and my related work in a later post.

OptionB

Shortly after hearing Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant speak on a Harvard Business Review podcast, I purchased Option B.

After listening to the podcast, I expected the book to contain more references to the research on resilience than it ultimately did. While I knew the book was popular press, I expected Penn Professor Adam Grant to add a more scholarly flavor. As it was, the book was a relatively short memoir focused on the death of Sheryl Sandberg’s husband Dave. Had I started the book expecting a window into Sandberg’s grieving process rather than an accessible integration of the resilience research, I think I would have appreciated the book more.  

On the positive side, the book is an extremely easy read and is written with a punchy, engaging style. Sandberg is quite honest, and is blunt in sharing with the readers what is and isn’t helpful in interacting with those who have experienced great personal loss. In Sanberg’s opinion, you should address the elephant in the room, and should not worry about reminding them of their loss, as they are already thinking about it all the time. Vague offers like “let me know if I can do anything to help” were deemed less helpful than more specific offers like “I am in the hospital waiting room for the next hour if you would like a hug” or “what would you not like on a burger.” Also, mere presence was deemed meaningful. As someone who is always at a loss for what to say or do in these situations, her suggestions were helpful. 

Of the relatively limited references to research, I found the discussion of Martin Seligman‘s work helpful, including the finding that “three P’s can stunt recovery: (1) personalization – the belief that we are at fault; (2) pervasiveness – the belief that an event will affect all areas of our life; and (3) permanence – the belief that the aftershocks of the event will last forever.” (16).

Also, I appreciated the references to Joe Kasper’s work on post-traumatic growth in its “five different forms: finding personal strength, gaining appreciation, forming deeper relationships, discovering more meaning in life, and seeing new possibilities.” (79). Thankfully, the authors note that you do not have to actually experience trauma to benefit from this sort of growth, you can experience pre-traumatic growth (especially through observing the trauma of others or near-misses in your own life). 

Based on the podcast, I was hoping on more information on raising resilient children, and there is a chapter on this topic. That said, the chapter did not offer much new. Sandberg and Grant refer to Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset, which I reviewed a few years ago on this blog. The main suggestion was to help “children develop four core beliefs: (1) they have some control over their lives; (2) they can learn from failure; (3) they matter as human beings; (4) and they have real strengths to rely on and share.” (111).

While this book wasn’t quite what I expected, given the very limited amount of time it took to read (2-3 hours), I think it was worthwhile as a honest look at one person’s grief and suggested ways to serve grieving people. 

Good morning from gorgeous Belize. I hope to see some of you this weekend at SEALS. A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the compliance course I recently taught. I received quite a few emails asking for my syllabus and teaching materials. I am still in the middle of grading but I thought I would provide some general advice for those who are considering teaching a similar course. I taught thinking about the priorities of current employers and the skills our students need.

1) Picking materials is hard– It’s actually harder if you have actually worked in compliance, as I have, and still consult, as I do from time to time. I have all of the current compliance textbooks but didn’t find any that suited my needs. Shameless plug- I’m co-authoring a compliance textbook to help fill the gap. I wanted my students to have the experience they would have if they were working in-house and had to work with real documents.  I found myself either using or getting ideas from many primary source materials from the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics, the  Institute of Privacy Professionals, DLA Piper, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizational Defendants, policy statements from various governmental entities in the US (the SEC, DOJ Banamex case, and state regulators), and abroad (UK Serious Frauds Office and Privacy Office). Students also compared CSR reports, looked at NGO materials, read the codes of conducts of the guest speakers who came in, and looked at 10-Ks, the Carbon Disclosure Project, and other climate change documents for their companies. I also had students watch YouTube videos pretending that they went to CLEs and had to write a memo to the General Counsel so that s/he could update the board on the latest developments in healthcare compliance and risk assessments. 

2) This should be a 3-credit course for it to be an effective skills course– My grand vision was for guest speakers to come in on Mondays  for an hour and then I would lecture for the remaining time or I would lecture for two hours on Monday and then students would have simulations on Wednesday.This never happened. Students became so engaged that the lecturers never finished in an hour. We were always behind. Simulations always ran over. 

3) Don’t give too much reading– I should have known better. I have now taught at three institutions at various tiers and at each one students have admitted- no, actually bragged- that they don’t do the reading. Some have told me that they do the reading for my classes because I grade for class participation, but I could actually see for my compliance course how they could do reasonably well without doing all of the reading, which means that I gave too much. I actually deliberately provided more than they needed in some areas (especially in the data privacy area) because I wanted them to build a library in case they obtained an internship or job after graduation and could use the resources. When I started out in compliance, just knowing where to look was half the battle. My students have 50 state surveys in employment law, privacy and other areas that will at least give them a head start.

4) Grading is hard- Grading a skills course is inherently subjective and requires substantive feedback to be effective.  40% of the grade is based on a class project, which was either a presentation to the board of directors or a training to a group of employees. Students had their choice of topic and audience but had to stay within their industry and had the entire 6-week term to prepare. Should I give more credit to the team who trained the sales force on off-label marketing for pharmaceuticals because the class acting as the sales force (and I) were deliberately disrespectful (as some sales people would be in real life because this type of  training would likely limit their commissions)? This made their training harder. Should I be tougher on the group that trained  the bored board on AML, since one student presenter was in banking for years? I already know the answers to these rhetorical questions. On individual projects, I provide comments as though I am a general counsel, a board member, or a CEO depending on the assignment. This may mean that the commentary is “why should I care, tell me about the ROI up front.” This is not language that law students are used to, but it’s language that I have tried to instill throughout the course. I gave them various versions of the speech, “give me less kumbaya, we need to care about the slave labor in the factories, and less consumers care about company reputation, and more statistics and hard numbers to back it up.”  Some of you may have seen this recent article about United and the “non-boycott, which validates what I have been blogging about for years. If it had come out during the class, I would have made students read it because board members would have read it and real life compliance officers would have had to deal with it head on.

5) Be current but know when to stop- I love compliance and CSR. For the students, it’s just a class although I hope they now love it too. I found myself printing out new materials right before class because I thought they should see this latest development. I’m sure that  what made me think of myself as cutting edge and of the moment made me come across to them as scattered and disorganized because it wasn’t on the syllabus.

6) Use guest speakers whenever possible- Skype them in if you have to. Nothing gives you credibility like having someone else say exactly what you have already said.

If you have any questions, let me know. I will eventually get back to those of you who asked for materials, but hopefully some of these links will help. If you are teaching a course or looking at textbook, send me feedback on them so that I can consider it as I work on my own. Please email me at mweldon@law.miami.edu.

Next week, I will blog about how (not) to teach a class on legal issues for start ups, entrepreneurs, and small businesses, which I taught last semester.

Today, the Delaware Supreme Court issued its much-awaited decision in DFC Global Corp. v. Muirfield Value Partners, LP, et al., regarding the proper role of the deal price when determining fair value in a corporate appraisal action.  In an opinion by Chief Justice Strine, the court rejected calls for a bright-line rule deferring to the price, but emphasized that market pricing is generally the best evidence of value.  In one passage that struck me as curious, the court held that the purpose of an appraisal action is not to award dissenters the very highest price their shares could command, but to “make sure that they receive fair compensation for their shares in the sense that it reflects what they deserve to receive based on what would fairly be given to them in an arm’s-length transaction.”  Which, you know, sounds an awful lot like deal price.  And not a whole lot like valuing a company “as a going concern, rather than its value to a third party as an acquisition,” In re Petsmart, 2017 WL 2303599 (Del. Ch. May 26, 2017), which is how appraisal has previously been described.

I will leave it to others to analyze the implications of DFC for appraisal litigation going forward, but one aspect to note is that Strine summarized his point with the colorful observation that fair value “does not mean the highest possible price that a company might have sold for had Warren Buffett negotiated for it on his best day and the Lenape who sold Manhattan on their worst.”  He then elaborated with the reasoning quoted below.  As the kids say, shot:

Capitalism is rough and ready, and the purpose of an appraisal is not to make sure that the petitioners get the highest conceivable value that might have been procured
had every domino fallen out of the company’s way….

The real world evidence regarding public company M&A transactions underscores this.  Various factors prevalent in our economy, which include Delaware’s own legal doctrines such as sell-side voting rights, Revlon, Unocal, the entire fairness doctrine, and the pro rata rule in appraisals, have caused the sellside gains for American public stockholders in M&A transactions to be robust. …[T]here is a rich literature noting that the buyers in public company acquisitions are more likely to come out a loser than the sellers, as competitive pressures often have resulted in buyers paying prices that are not justified by their ability to generate a positive return on the high costs of acquisition and of integration. As one authority summarizes:

“According to McKinsey research on 1,415 acquisitions from 1997 through 2009, the combined value of the acquirer and target increased by about 4 percent on average. However, the evidence is also overwhelming that, on average, acquisitions do not create much if any value for the acquiring company’s shareholders. Empirical studies, examining the reaction of capital markets to M&A announcements find that the value-weighted average deal lowers the acquirer’s stock price between 1 and 3 percent. Stock returns following the acquisition are no better. Mark Mitchell and Erik Stafford have found that acquirers underperform comparable companies on shareholder returns by 5 percent during the three years following the acquisitions.”

Which leads me to, chaser:

M&A deals create more value for acquiring firm shareholders post-2009 than ever before. Public acquisitions fuel positive and statistically significant abnormal returns for acquirers while stock-for-stock deals no longer destroy value. Mega deals, priced at least $500 mil, typically associated with more pronounced agency problems, investor scrutiny and media attention, seem to be driving the documented upturn. Acquiring shareholders now gain $62 mil around the announcement of such deals; a $325 mil gain improvement compared to 1990–2009. The corresponding synergistic gains have also catapulted to more than $542 mil pointing to overall value creation from M&As on a large scale. Our results are robust to different measures and controls and appear to be linked with profound improvements in the quality of corporate governance among acquiring firms in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

That last quote is from the abstract of a new paper published by G. Alexandridis, N. Antypas, N. Travlos, called Value creation from M&As: New evidence, where they find, well, new evidence that the old deals-are-bad-for-the-acquirer saw may no longer hold.

As you can see, the authors speculate that the increased acquirer-side value is due to improved post-crisis governance.  I actually have a different theory on that which I’m working through, but perhaps a more important point is this: Whatever value target shareholders receive is necessarily a function of the governing law – including, as the Delaware Supreme Court says, Revlon, Unocal, and the entire fairness doctrine.  But with new cases like Corwin and Kahn, those are rapidly going the way of the dodo.  (See, e.g., J. Travis Laster, Changing Attitudes: The Stark Results Of Thirty Years Of Evolution In Delaware M&A Litigation; Steven Davidoff Solomon & Randall Thomas, The Rise and Fall of Delaware’s Takeover Standards). It may once have been true that acquirers overpaid for targets, but it’s dangerous to change the legal landscape and expect the market to remain the same.

My colleague, Joan Heminway, yesterday posted Democratic Norms and the Corporation: The Core Notion of Accountability. She raises some interesting points (as usual), and she argues: “In my view, more work can be done in corporate legal scholarship to push on the importance of accountability as a corporate norm and explore further analogies between political accountability and corporate accountability.”

I have not done a lot of reading in this area, but I am inclined to agree that it seems like an area that warrants more discussion and research.  The post opens with some thought-provoking writing by Daniel Greenwood, including this:  

Most fundamentally, corporate law and our major business corporations treat the people most analogous to the governed, those most concerned with corporate decisions, as mere helots. Employees in the American corporate law system have no political rights at all—not only no vote, but not even virtual representation in the boardroom legislature.
Joan correctly observes, “Whether you agree with Daniel or not on the substance, his views are transparent and his belief and energy are palpable.” Although I admit I have not spent a lot of time with his writing, but my initial take is that I do not agree with his premise. That is, employees do have political rights, and they have them where they belong: in local, state, and federal elections.  Employees, in most instances, do not have political rights within their employment at all.  Whether you work for the government, a nonprofit, or a small sole proprietorship, you don’t generally have political rights as to your employment.  You may have some say in an employee-owned entity, and you may have some votes via union membership, but even there, those votes aren’t really as to your employment specifically. 
 
The idea of seeking democratic norms via the corporate entity itself strikes me as flawed.  If people don’t like how corporations (or other entities) operate, then it would seem to me the political process can solve that via appropriate legislation or regulation. That is, make laws that allow entities to do more social good if they are so inclined. Or even require entities to do so, if that’s the will of the people (this is not a recommendation, merely an observation).  Scholars like Greenwood and others continue to make assertions that entities cannot make socially responsible choices. He states, ” The law bars [corporations], in the absence of unanimous consent, from making fundamental value choices, for example, from balancing the pursuit of profit against other potential corporate goals, such as quality products, interests of non-shareholder participants or even the actual financial interests of the real human beings who own the shares.”  And judges and scholars, like Chancellor Chandler and Chief Justice Strine, have reinforced this view, which, I maintain, is wrong (or should be).  
 
Professor Bainbridge has explained, “The fact that corporate law does not intend to promote corporate social responsibility, but rather merely allows it to exist behind the shield of the business judgment rule becomes significant in — and is confirmed by — cases where the business judgment rule does not apply.” Todd Henderson similarly argued, and I agree, 
Those on the right, like Milton Friedman, argue that the shareholder-wealth-maximization requirement prohibits firms from acting in ways that benefit, say, local communities or the environment, at the expense of the bottom line. Those on the left, like Franken, argue that the duty to shareholders makes corporations untrustworthy and dangerous. They are both wrong.
I don’t disagree with Joan (or with Greenwood, for that matter), that accountability matters, but I do think we should frame accountability properly, and put accountability where it belongs.  That is political accountability and corporate accountability are different. As I see it, corporations are not directly accountable to citizens (employees or not) in this sense (they are in contract and tort, of course). Corporations are accountable to their shareholders, and to some degree to legislators and regulators who can modify the rules based on how corporations act.  Politicians, on the other hand, are accountable to the citizens.  If citizens are not happy with how entities behave, they can take that to their politicians, who can then choose to act (or not) on their behalf.  
 
I think entities should consider the needs of employees, and I believe entities would be well served to listen to their employees. I happen to think that is good business. But I think the idea that employees have a right to a formal voice at the highest levels within the entity is flawed, until such time as the business itself or legislators or regulators decide to make that the rule. (I do not, to be clear, think that would be a good rule for legislators or regulators to make for private entities.) The proper balance of laws and regulations is a separate question from this discussion, though. Here, the key is that accountability — or, as Prof. Bainbridge says, “the power to decide” — remains in the right place.  I am inclined to think the power structure is correct right now, and whether that power is being used correctly is an entirely different, and separate, issue.  

The corporate form has been compared and contrasted favorably and unfavorably with government.  The literature is broad and deep.  Having said that, there is, perhaps, no one who writes more passionately on this topic than Daniel Greenwood.  Set forth below are two examples of text from his work that illustrate my point.

We live in a democratic age, in which the sole legitimate source of political power is the consent of the governed. Yet our business corporations defy every norm of democracy.
 
Most fundamentally, corporate law and our major business corporations treat the people most analogous to the governed, those most concerned with corporate decisions, as mere helots. Employees in the American corporate law system have no political rights at all—not only no vote, but not even virtual representation in the boardroom legislature. Board members owe a fiduciary duty to the corporation, according to most of the statutes, and to the shareholders, according to the popular shareholder primacy narratives, but they owe no consideration at all to employees.
 
Daniel J.H. Greenwood, Essay: Telling Stories of Shareholder Supremacy, 2009 Mich. St. L. Rev. 1049, 1060 (2009).
 
The corporation as a state-within-the-state . . . cannot be justified under any democratic theory, because this state-like entity defies all democratic norms internally. No corporation operates by the principle of one person, one vote. All economically significant corporations disenfranchise a substantial portion of the affected populace, while even shareholders vote according to the number of shares they hold. Moreover, standard corporate law sharply limits the control that even the “voters” have over “their” entity. The law bars them, in the absence of unanimous consent, from making fundamental value choices, for example, from balancing the pursuit of profit against other potential corporate goals, such as quality products, interests of non-shareholder participants or even the actual financial interests of the real human beings who own the shares. Moreover, it even bars them from electing directors pledged to particular interests: directors, unlike ordinary politicians, are bound by law to pursue the interests of all (and only) shares, and courts will enforce this duty-subject to the often significant limitations of the business judgment rule-at the behest of any shareholder, regardless of election results. Theorists, therefore, usually resort to market-based explanations of why the corporation is unable to exert any power over its shareholders, employees and other participants.
 
Daniel J.H. Greenwood, Markets and Democracy: The Illegitimacy of Corporate Law, 74 UMKC L. Rev. 41, 54–55 (2005) (footnotes omitted).  Whether you agree with Daniel or not on the substance, his views are transparent and his belief and energy are palpable.
 
With politics in the news every day and corporations on my mind, I have been pondering certain elements of democracy as they play themselves out in corporate governance.  In particular, of late, I have focused in on accountability as a core democratic norm.  

Continue Reading Democratic Norms and the Corporation: The Core Notion of Accountability

I’ve previously posted about the problem of multiforum litigation, and how it’s very much in Delaware’s interest to figure out a way to keep cases flowing to its courts.  In particular, Delaware’s recommendation that derivative plaintiffs seek books and records before proceeding with their claims simply invites faster filers to sue in other jurisdictions – and invites defendants to seek dismissals against the weakest plaintiffs, which will then act as res judicata against the stronger/more careful ones.   As VC Laster put it during a hearing in Avi Wagner v. Third Avenue Management, LLC, “The defendants want to get out of litigation, and the best way to do it is to fight the weak plaintiff . . . [T]hey have the plaintiff they want and the allegations they want….  This whole system of multi-forum litigation … creates a lot of systemic dysfunction. It’s certainly true that things should be resolved in one forum and at one time, but it doesn’t follow from that … that they should necessarily be followed under a system that incentivizes the filing of a fast complaint by a weak plaintiff so that defendants have the high ground.” (May 20, 2016).

Delaware’s latest proposal to deal with the problem came in the form of a suggestion from its Supreme Court: perhaps when derivative actions are dismissed for failure to allege demand futility, it would violate the constitutional due process rights of subsequent plaintiffs to bind them to that decision.   The theory is that until the demand requirement is satisfied, a plaintiff represents only him or herself, and not the corporate entity; therefore, any dismissal only extends to that plaintiff.  In January, the Supreme Court remanded to Chancery to make a determination of the constitutional law issues. See Cal. State Teachers Ret. Sys. v. Alvarez, 2017 WL 239364 (Del. 2017).

Well, a few days ago, Chancellor Bouchard came back with an answer.  He concluded that an Arkansas court’s dismissal of a derivative case on the grounds that those plaintiffs failed to show demand futility should not bar similar claims by Delaware plaintiffs.

The reason I find this fascinating is because it once again highlights Delaware’s uneasy relationship with the substantive versus the procedural aspects of its law.

We begin with the principle that state courts must give full faith and credit to decisions in other jurisdictions, which means that they must give the same preclusive effect to a judgment that the rendering court would have given.  In this case, that meant determining what kind of preclusive effect Arkansas would have given to the original judgment.

Chancellor Bouchard concluded that – like most jurisdictions – Arkansas would have found the original judgment was res judicata against subsequent plaintiffs.  The obvious way out of that – suggested by the Delaware Supreme Court – was to find that preclusion would violate federal due process.

And that’s sort of what Bouchard held.  But he was clearly uncomfortable resting entirely on federal constitutional standards, especially given the near-universal agreement that preclusion is permissible in these circumstances.  So, rather than phrase his holding purely in terms of a constitutional holding (as the Delaware Supreme Court had asked him to do), he phrased it in terms of a recommendation to the Delaware Supreme Court of the rule they should adopt.  And his recommendation rested not only on federal constitutional standards, but also public policy– Delaware’s policy, and by extension Delaware’s control over its corporations.  He concluded by recommending that Delaware adopt Laster’s reasoning from In re EZCORP, Inc. Consulting Agreement Derivative Litigation – which itself was based both on Delaware law and federal law.  (It is significant to note at this point that when the Delaware Supreme Court remanded the case to him, it specifically held “Delaware law does not apply here, as the parties agree.” Cal. State Teachers Ret. Sys. v. Alvarez, 2017 WL 239364 (Del. 2017)).

Which raises the same question that Trulia raises:  Is this a substantive issue, or a procedural one?  More specifically, do we treat the preclusive effect of derivative litigation as a matter of civil procedure, or as a matter of corporate internal affairs?  Bouchard kinda straddled the line; it will be interesting to see what the Delaware Supreme Court (and other jurisdictions) choose to do.

These days it is easy to get discouraged on how divided our nation seems to be on a number of issues. John Inazu, Distinguished Professor of Law, Religion, and Political Science at Washington University, maps a way forward in his book Confident Pluralism (2016).

The book is divided into two parts: (1) Constitutional Commitments, and (2) Civic Practices.

The first part “contend[s] that recent constitutional doctrine has departed from our longstanding embrace of pluralism and the political arrangements that make pluralism possible.” (8) Further, the first part offers guideposts for future decisions and political solutions. The first part argues for both inclusion and dissent, for the free formation of voluntary groups, for meaningful access to public forums, and for access to publicly available funding for diverse organizations. Provocatively, Inazu claims that Bob Jones case – which stripped tax-exempt status from Bob Jones University due to its prohibition of interracial dating/marriage – is “normatively attractive to almost everyone, [but] is conceptually wrong.” (75) Inazu claims that “[t]he IRS should not limit tax-exempt status based on viewpoint of ideology.” (79) He extends the argument to “generally available resources.” While the Trinity Lutheran case was decided by the Supreme Court after publication of Confident Pluralism the decision seems in line with Inazu’s argument about the provision of ”generally available resources” to all types of organizations. Inazu does concede “Neither [the inclusion of dissent] premise is absolute. Inclusion will stop short of giving toddlers the right to vote or legally insane people the right to bear arms. Dissent will not extend to child molester or cannibals.” (16) I fully never figured out how he draws these lines, as he discusses other controversial topics that the majority of people strongly object to, but perhaps he only seeks to exclude when virtually everyone in society agrees.

The second part “canvass[es] the civic practices of confident pluralism that for the most part lie beyond the reach of the law.” (10) The second part centers around civic aspirations of tolerance, humility, and patience. As defined by Inazu, “Tolerance is the recognition that people are for the most part free to pursue their own beliefs and practices, even those beliefs and practices we find morally objectionable. Humility takes the further step of recognizing that others will sometimes find our beliefs and practices morally objectionable, and that we can’t always “prove” that we are right and they are wrong. Patience points toward restraint, persistence, and endurance in our interactions across difference.” (11). In this part, he describes the “hurtful insult” and the “conversation stopper” as speech we should aspire to avoid. (97-100). The hurtful insult includes terms like “fat, ugly, stupid, friendless.” (97). The aim of the conversation stopper is not primarily used to wound (as the hurtful insult is) but rather to shut down the conversation. Terms like “close-minded, extremist, heretical, and militant” fall in the conversation stopper category. While Inazu admits that those terms can be hurtful, he claims that they are mainly used to shut down reasoned debate.

In conclusion, this is a timely book and is well worth reading. At under 170 pages (including the notes), it is an extremely quick read, but the book is also worth pondering for extended time. Inazu encourages relationships across differences, such as Dan Cathy (Chick-fil-A) and Shane Windmeyer (Campus Pride) and former President Barack Obama and former Republican senator Tom Coburn. (124) I’d add the friendships of the late, conservative justice Antonin Scalia with his liberal colleagues on the Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. With Inazu, I suggest face-to face conversations with friends with different, strongly-held beliefs. While social media and electronic communication can sometimes suffice between in-person meetings, tough topics are best handled around a table and after trust has been earned. Personally, I count my friendships with those who see the world very differently than I do as some of my most valuable relationships, and those friendships make it difficult to construct the straw men we see so frequently in TV news “debates.”

For more, Paul Horwitz (Alabama) shares some thorough and thoughtful notes on the book here.