The first part of my June scholarship and teaching tour is now done.  Having just returned from the Law and Society Association conference in New Orleans (about which I will say more in later posts), I now am preparing for my presentation on Friday at “Method in the Madness: The Art and Science of Teaching Transactional Law and Skills,” this year’s conference hosted by Emory University School of Law’s Center for Transactional Law and Practice.  Emory Law convenes these conferences every other year.  The conferences always focus on teaching transactional business law and skills.

Here’s the abstract for my presentation:

Drafting Corporate Bylaws: From Alpha to Omega

The archetypal introductory law school course in business associations law characteristically introduces students to corporate bylaws. Typically, course references to corporate bylaws occur in the context of corporate formation and in cases construing corporate bylaws in the context of private ordering, fundamental corporate changes, and the like. Treatment of the subject is necessarily somewhat superficial and episodic. Although students may be exposed to bylaw provisions and even, in some cases, a sample set of corporate bylaws, little time exists in the standard basic Business Associations course to address the optimal drafting process for drafting organic documents (including corporate bylaws).

An advanced business associations offering or a business planning course, however, provides a wonderful opportunity to engage students in this type of activity and give them a deeper appreciation for the governance significance of corporate bylaws. For the past two years, I have taught a module in Representing Enterprises, a transaction simulation course offered to participants in The University of Tennessee College of Law’s Concentration in Business Transactions, that focuses on drafting bylaws for a closely held start-up corporation organized under Tennessee law. The module offers a sequenced approach to the construction of corporate bylaws, starting with an in-depth survey of applicable statutory and decisional law, progressing through the identification of forms and norms, and ending with individual and group drafting exercises. The five class meetings (ten classroom hours in total over a period of two-and-a-half weeks) in the module engage facilitated peer-to-peer teaching and focus on relevant drafting processes (incorporating and reflecting on the students’ approaches to the required course assignments) and resulting outtakes (more precisely, takeaways).

In this presentation, I will share in more detail the content of and pedagogy involved in this course offering. As support, I will supply all participants with the module syllabus and the staged series of assignments that I give to the students to execute on the embodied learning objectives. This presentation should be particularly useful to those offering, planning on offering, or considering offering a business entity planning and drafting opportunity for law students. But it also may be valuable for those teaching introductory doctrinal offerings in business associations law.

If you cannot be at the conference and are interested in the materials supporting or PowerPoint slides for this presentation, please just let me know.  

Also, you may want to note that many (most) presentations at the conference will be memorialized in a forthcoming volume of our student-edited business law journal, Transactions: Tennessee Journal of Business Law.  Transactions has been a partner of Emory Law in its biennial conferences from the start.  The Transactions volumes from the Emory Law conferences typically are quite popular among business law instructors.  I use my copies a fair amount.  So, you may want to get one of these, too.  Just fyi: the book usually comes out in the spring semester following the conference.  Also note that some of the included works are produced from transcripts of the proceedings (very tough to do) and some are papers prepared by the presenters on the topic of their presentation.

Atlanta, here I come!

How much do we trust institutional investors to protect their interests?

Delaware law has gradually been inching toward a recognition that in a stock market dominated by institutional investors, old assumptions – about a dispersed,  uninformed, and rationally passive shareholder base – must give way to a new recognition of shareholder sophistication and incentives.

You can see the tendrils of this growing awareness in, for example, opinions like Corwin v. KKR Fin. Holdings LLC, 125 A.3d 304 (Del. 2015), where the Delaware Supreme Court held that a shareholder vote in favor of a merger would act as a ratification of the directors’ conduct – a ruling that implicitly relied on an expectation of shareholder sophistication.  See id. (“When the real parties in interest—the disinterested equity owners—can easily protect themselves at the ballot box by simply voting no, the utility of a litigation-intrusive standard of review promises more costs to stockholders in the form of litigation rents and inhibitions on risk-taking than it promises in terms of benefits to them.”)  You can see it in then-Vice Chancellor Strine’s opinion in In re Pure Res. S’Holders Litig., 808 A.2d 421 (Del. Ch. 2002), where he held that controlling shareholder tender offers need not always be subject to entire fairness review, in light of the “increased activism of institutional investors and the greater information flows available to them” – which influenced later standards applied to the merger context.  See Kahn v. M&F Worldwide Corp., 88 A.3d 635 (Del. 2014).

You can also see it in Myron Steele’s recent lecture at Fordham, where he predicted that “it’s only a matter of time before substantive coercion is history. Because when you have a seventy-five percent institutional stockholder base, it’s not like you’re their guardian. They’re perfectly capable of making their own decisions…”  See 20 Fordham J. Corp. & Fin. L. 352 (2015).

But in In re Appraisal of Dell, 2016 Del. Ch. LEXIS 81 (Del. Ch. 2016), Vice Chancellor Laster pooh-poohed market judgments, embarking on a prolonged discussion about why shareholders – and even market analysts – might fail to recognize the value of new investments with long term payoffs, not even necessarily because they lack information, but because of what he deemed an “anti-bubble.”  The most eyebrow-raising moment came when, in support of this thesis, he cited Martin Lipton’s blog posts at the HLS Forum and CLS Blue Sky.  Martin Lipton**, of course, frequently argues that shareholders are uninformed and not to be trusted, in support of a general agenda of minimizing shareholder power and maximizing management discretion.

All of this just begs the question:  if shareholders’ judgments are so untrustworthy, why do their votes in favor of a merger have such an immunizing effect?*

 

*the contradiction is made more obvious by Martin Lipton’s recent blog post decrying the Dell decision; the irony, of course, is that Lipton’s own arguments were used to justify the court’s conclusion that shareholder valuations are unreliable.

**in case anyone was wondering, no relation.

I recently finished Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (2016) by Angela Duckworth (Penn Psychology).

Next week, I will post some reflections on the contents of the book, but for now, I would like to discuss professors publishing for a popular audience. Tongue-twisting alliteration unintended.  

I am thankful that Duckworth wrote this book for a popular audience rather than in a way that would target a narrow slice of academia. Even as a professor myself, I find books written for popular audience easier to digest, especially if in a different discipline. While popular press books often oversimplify, I would rather a professor author a popular press book on her studies (and studies in her field) than have a journalist attempt to explain them. Also, while a popular press book may oversimplify, professors tend to be intentional about avoiding claims that are too sweeping. Note that in this interview, like the book, Duckworth is careful to state that grit is not the only thing that contributes to success. Finally, especially when the professor has done the background academic work first, as Duckworth did in many peer-reviewed journal articles, a popular press book can reach more people and inspire change and may eventually lead to broader engagement with the underlying academic articles. 

Grit, as a popular press book, has already reached a large audience. Grit was published by Scribner: An Imprint of Simon & Schuster (not a university press) and jumped into the top-5 of The New York Times best-seller list for hardcover non-fiction. Duckworth had already reached well over a million people with her TED talk, and the book allowed her to be much more nuanced than she could be in a 6 minute speech. The TED talk was a gateway to her popular press book and perhaps her popular press book with be a gateway to the academic research she cites.   

One problem with engaging a large, popular audience is that the professor may lose control of her message, and people may misinterpret the findings. Duckworth looks like she is staying engaged in the conversation, however, and has, for example, written to argue against grading schools on grit. 

In short, there are certainly potential problems when writing about academic topics for a popular audience, but I am glad Duckworth took on the challenge and spread her research in this way. That said, as I will discuss next week, Grit does have weaknesses, in addition to its strengths.

See below for information on the The Midwest Academy of Legal Studies in Business (MALSB) Annual Conference in Chicago, IL and their call for papers. I attended MALSB this year, found it beneficial, and reflected on the conference in this post.

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Midwest Academy of Legal Studies in Business

2017 Annual Conference

March 22 – 24, 2017

The Palmer House Hilton Hotel – Chicago, Illinois

Conference Registration and Call for Papers

The Midwest Academy of Legal Studies in Business (MALSB) Annual Conference is held in conjunction with the MBAA International Conference, long billed as “The Best Conference Value in America.”

The MBAA International Conference draws hundreds of academics from business-related fields such as accounting, business/society/government, economics, entrepreneurship, finance, health administration, information systems, international business, management, and marketing. Although the MALSB will have its own program track on legal studies, attendees will be able to take advantage of the multidisciplinary nature of this international conference and attend sessions held by the other program tracks. 

For more information on the MALSB and its Annual Conference, please see the attached Call for Papers or go to http://www.malsb.org/. 

Readers attending Law & Society in New Orleans at the end of the week should make a note of the following corporate and securities law panels taking place on Friday, June 3rd and Saturday, June 4th.   

FRIDAY, JUNE 3

 
   

2:45 PM – 4:30 PM

1146—Panel Session—Financial Market Regulation

Room: Salon C, NOLA Marriott

4:45 PM – 6:30 PM

1147—Panel Session—Rulemaking, National and International

Room: Salon C, NOLA Marriott
   
   

SATURDAY, JUNE 4

 
   

8:15 AM – 10:00 AM

1150—Panel Session—Investors, Consumers, and the Public  Interest

Room: Salon C, NOLA Marriott        

2:45 PM – 4:30 PM

1152—Panel Session—Corporate Governance and Value

Room: Salon C, NOLA Marriott

2:45 PM – 4:30 PM

2895—Roundtable—Corporate Diversity: Comparative and Critical Perspectives

Room: Galerie 5, NOLA Marriott

4:45 PM – 6:30 PM

1154—Panel Session—Addressing Agency Costs and Corporate Wrongdoing

Room: Salon C, NOLA Marriott

 

*updated  June 1st at 4:20 to include 2 additional panels submitted by a reader (Shlomit  Azgad-Tromer)

Thursday June 2nd : Power Business and Legal Practice, 12:45- 2:30 PM
Friday June 3rd : Stakeholders and the Corporation, 4:45-6:30 PM

 

-Anne Tucker

Donald Trump was in my home state of West Virginia recently, and he promised to bring back coal jobs: 

And West Virginia. And we’re going to get those miners back to work. I’ll tell you what. We’re going to get those miners back to work . . . 

Let me tell you, the miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania which was so great to me last week and Ohio and all over, they’re going to start to work again. Believe me. You’re going to be proud again to be miners.

How he plans to do this is not clear, but part of it will be to attack the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.  Okay, but that’s a relatively recent development, and was certainly not the cause of the decline in coal production since the last production peak in 2008. The primary cause: cheap and abundant natural gas from horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. 

In my former home state of North Dakota, Trump was telling voters he would rescind President Obama’s climate change rules and work to make the Keystone XL pipeline a reality to ship petroleum from Canada’s oil sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.  Further, Trump has stated that he would relax regulations that limit coal leases on federal lands and reduce hydraulic fracturing regulations on federal lands.  

It appears, then, that his plan to support the coal, oil, and natural gas industries will be to lower costs.  That should increase supply, right?  The problem for each industry, though, is that excess supply has lowered prices so much that all three areas are cutting back on activity (and jobs). Reducing governmental restrictions would lower costs even more, which is not likely to increase jobs or production in the current climate. Any such change might increase margins for existing activities, but it would not likely incentivize a change in behavior that would lead toward the state goals of increased employment. As the Financial Times recently explained:

One of the factors behind that [oil market] collapse was Saudi Arabia’s strategy of continuing to produce at high levels above 10m barrels per day, rather than cutting output to ease the glut of oil. 

More oil (or gas or coal) equals lower prices.  Lower taxes and regulations equals lower cost of exploration and production, which leads to? More oil (or gas or coal) and lower prices.  Even worse, low prices tend to encourage automation, which is particularly not good for jobs. 

One can debate whether there is value in reducing these kinds of regulations, but one needs to explain how greater supply and lower prices is going to help any of these industries in the way the policies are purporting to (or another justification is needed). But then, Trump has not explained how he intends to implement any of his promises or how any of his proposals would work.  

Newsflash: Just saying something, no matter how confidently and assertively it is said, doesn’t make it true. I sure hope a majority of voters recognize this come November.   

This year, my research and writing season has started off with a bang.  While grading papers and exams earlier this month, I finished writing one symposium piece and first-round-edited another.  Today, I will put the final touches on PowerPoint slides for a presentation I give the second week in June (submission is required today for those) and start working on slides for the presentation I will give Friday.

All of this sets into motion a summer concert conference, Barbri, and symposium tour that (somewhere along the line) got a bit complicated.  Here are the cities and dates:

New Orleans, LA – June 2-5
Atlanta, GA – June 10-11
Nashville, TN – June 17
Chicago, IL – June 23-24
Seattle, WA – June 27

I know some of my co-bloggers are joining me along the way.  I look forward to seeing them.  Each week, I will keep you posted on current events as best I can while managing the research and writing and presentation preparations.  The topics of my summer research and teaching run the gamut from insider trading (through by-law drafting, agency, unincorporated business associations, personal property, and benefit corporations) to crowdfunding.  A nice round lot.

This coming week, I will be at the Law and Society Association annual conference.  My presentation at this conference relates to an early-stage project on U.S. insider trading cases.  The title and abstract for the project and the currently envisioned initial paper (which I would, of course, already change in a number of ways) are as follows:

Continue Reading Heminway’s June Scholarship and Teaching Tour 2016 – Part I

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As a former student of modern American History (yes, that was my undergraduate major, along with International Relations), I find Memorial Day both sobering and inspiring.  The number of servicemen and servicewomen, as well as others, that we have lost at war is staggering.  As I may have written in a former post, my dad, my father-in-law, and my secretarial assistant all are veterans.  I am glad they made it out alive.  So, today I will spend some time reflecting on those who didn’t emerge victorious in the fight for life at war as well as on those who did emerge victorious from that fight.  I am grateful for them all.