ContractsProf Blog

Greetings from Netanya...

Greetings from Netanya Academic College, where I will enjoy this symposium tomorrow: Law of Contract or Laws of Contracts (here's the program: Download Symposium).  Come join us if you are in Israel!

[Meredith R. Miller]

 

The Spring Contracts Conference Will Be in San Diego This Year!

Conference Announcement and Call For Papers
7^th International Conference on Contracts
Thomas Jefferson School of Law,
San Diego, California  March 2^nd – 3^rd 2012

The 7^th Annual International Conference on Contracts will be hosted by the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in its new state of the art facility in San Diego California on March 2^nd & 3^rd 2012.

 In the fine tradition of previous conferences held at Stetson, UNLV, McGeorge, South Texas, Texas Wesleyan and Gloucester, England, this conference will provide scholars and teachers at all experience levels the opportunity to present, discuss and receive feedback on a wide spectrum of scholarship.  Articles recently published, articles-accepted-but-not-yet-published, works-in-progress, not yet fully formed ideas for scholarship or pedagogical innovations are welcome.  The conference also provides an eagerly anticipated annual opportunity to network with colleagues, potential collaborators and mentors from the U.S. and around the globe.

Call For Papers and Panels:  We invite paper, presentation and panel proposals exploring any aspect of contract law, theory and policy.  The topic range is deliberately broad to permit an as full as possible exploration of contractual themes.  Past programs have thus included panels on “traditional” contracts topics (e.g. remedies, formation, defenses, etc), on contract-related subjects (insurance, consumer law, commercial law, dispute resolution, family law and restitution), and from a rich variety perspectives (historical, jurisprudential, empirical, institutional, law-and-economics, international and comparative contracting and others).  We also solicit volunteers to serve as moderators or discussants for panels that are not “pre-packaged”.

Participation: We will try to accommodate as many presenters, moderators, and discussants as possible.  Junior scholars and those working in non-U.S. legal systems in particular are encouraged to propose papers or panels and to volunteer to serve as discussants or moderators.  Anyone wishing to attend to enjoy the conference without presenting or serving as a discussant or moderator is also welcome.  There is no publication requirement for conference participants.  (Experience suggests that individual papers and panels are often published elsewhere).

 Proposal Submissions: To propose a presentation or panel, please email a title, brief description, and any supporting materials to (email preferred) eniola@tjsl.edu or to Eniola Akindemowo at the address below by Friday, December 23^rd 2011.   If your interest is to discuss or moderate, please let us know (indicating your interests and availability) by Friday, December 23^rd 2011 also.  All proposals received by the December 23^rd deadline will be evaluated and we will try to accommodate all requests to discuss or moderate.  Proposals and requests received after the December 23^rd deadline will be entertained on a space-available- basis.

 Registration and Preliminary Schedule:  Final details (including the conference hotel, registration details, and a conference website) are being finalized and will be circulated shortly, however we do not expect the registration fee to be more than $250.  The registration fee will cover the costs of a continental breakfast, lunch and tea breaks on both days and a reception dinner on the Friday.  The conference program will take place between approximately 9:00 am – 5:30 pm on both days. 

 

Proposals and Participation Requests Due:                  Friday, December 23^rd, 2012
Papers and Presentations in Final Form Due:               Friday, February 10^th, 2012
Conference Begins:                                                 Friday, March 2^nd, 2012
Conference Ends:                                                     Saturday, March 3^rd, 2012

Conference Contacts: 

Eniola Akindemowo,
Professor of Law,
Thomas Jefferson School of Law,
1155 Island Avenue,
San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 916-4204.
eniola@san.rr.com 

Donna Gelken,
Faculty/Conference Assistant,
Thomas Jefferson School of Law,
1155 Island Avenue,
San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 961-4254
dgehlken@tjsl.edu

[JT]

AALS Contracts Section Call for Proposals

The Executive Committee of the AALS Contracts Section solicits proposals for the Section’s Annual Meeting program New Voices in Contracts Scholarship, scheduled for Saturday, January 7, 2012, from 1:30 to 3:15 p.m., at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel.

Invitation: We invite proposals exploring any aspect of contract law, theory, policy, and practice writ large (including, but not limited to, bankruptcy/insolvency, commercial law, consumer law, dispute resolution regimes, family law, insurance law, legal systems, and restitution, in addition to more traditional contract topics) from a behavioral, cognitive, comparative, critical, doctrinal, economic, empirical, equitable, historical, institutional, interdisciplinary, jurisprudential, pedagogical, philosophical, policy-driven, political, or sociological perspective.  We will entertain proposals based on work in any stage of completion from formulation to a finished paper, but prefer proposals that are not based on work already published in a mainstream American academic law journal.

Program: Our goal is to provide a forum for contracts scholars who have been active in the field for ten years or less, especially those who are pre-tenured -- although we may consider proposals from more senior scholars whose work may not be widely known to the AALS Contracts Section's membership.  We will give some preference to proposers who have not recently been part of an AALS Contracts Section annual meeting program.  Depending on the number of proposals we receive and select, we may invite more seasoned contracts scholars whose expertise overlaps with one or more accepted proposals to serve as discussants for one or more presentations.

Submitting a Proposal: Please e-mail an abstract, précis, outline, draft, or paper to section chair Keith Rowley (keith.rowley@unlv.edu), chair-elect Tom Joo (twjoo@ucdavis.edu), and immediate past chair Lisa Bernstein (LBernst621@gmail.com) no later than 5:00 p.m. PST, Friday, December 2, 2011, indicating how best to contact you between then and December 10.  While we will reserve at least one spot for submissions received by the foregoing deadline (and may consider late proposals), we will begin reviewing proposals as we receive them and may begin extending offers as early as Wednesday, November 30th.

[Keith A. Rowley]

A Mini-Report from the Wisconsin Contracts Law Conference

Earlier this week, we invited participants in the recent contracts conference honoring the scholarship of Stewart Macauley held at the University of Wisconsin at Madison to send in accounts of the proceedings.

Claire Hill from the University of Minnesota provides the following account:

The recent conference at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, to honor Stewart Macaulay’s work, was just as it should have been – a felicitous mix of empirics and theory, in sociology, economics, law and philosophy, on relational contracts, norms, networks, what contract law can and can’t do, what we should be teaching our students, what we shouldn’t be teaching our students, what people use contracts to do, what they don’t use contracts to do, what they shouldn’t or can’t use contracts to do, and much more. My contribution was on mistakes in complex business contracts. It was great fun to collect examples and quotes (one was “Commas all over the place. Complete confusion.”) I’m very grateful to have been invited to such a wonderful and well-organized event.    

[Posted on behalf of Claire Hill by JT]

Law of Obligations Conference at the University of Western Ontario

Sixth Biennial Conference on the Law of Obligations:
Challenging Orthodoxy
Hosted by The Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada
July 17-20, 2012

The Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario is pleased to be hosting the Sixth Biennial Conference on the Law of Obligations. The conference will bring together leading scholars in tort, contract, equity and unjust enrichment from throughout the common law world.

The theme of the conference is "Challenging Orthodoxy." We have prepared an academic program of over 60 speakers in which professors, graduate students and eminent practitioners will challenge established common law rules and suggest new approaches to both old and emerging problems. The plenary speakers are Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Justice Thomas Cromwell (Supreme Court of Canada), Melvin Eisenberg (Berkeley), John Goldberg (Harvard), Andrew Robertson (Melbourne), Ernest Weinrib (Toronto), Richard Wright (Chicago-Kent), and Ben Zipursky (Fordham).

The Obligations Conference originated at the University of Melbourne in 2002, and has since become one of the leading private law conferences in the common law world. The biennial conferences have been held at the University of Melbourne, the University of Queensland, the National University of Singapore and the University of Oxford.

For more information on the Conference and to register please visit: http://www.law.uwo.ca/Conferences/Obligations6/index.html.

[JT]

International Sales Conference at Florida

Conference Announcement
International Sales Law Conference: Global Challenge of International Sales Law - University of Florida

Friday and Saturday, November 11-12, 2011, Hilton University of Florida Conference Center, Gainesville, Florida

The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), Center for Business Education and Research (CIBER) (University of Florida), University of Florida Warrington College of Business Administration, International Commercial Law Institute, Center for European Studies (CES) (University of Florida) presents a global conference on International Sales Law with a primary focus on the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) to be held at the Hilton University of Florida Hotel and Conference Center on Friday, November 11 and Saturday, November 12, 2011. The conference will run from Friday morning through Saturday afternoon. Registrants have the option of attending Friday-Saturday or a single day (Friday or Saturday).
 
OVERVIEW: The Conference brings together CISG scholars from twenty countries, as well as practitioners and members of international organizations. It will provide a working knowledge of the CISG's substantive rules, as well as the surrounding case law. It will review the CISG case law in numerous countries, as well as arbitral decisions, and provide insights into recent trends in its use. The key substantive issues covered include writing requirements, contract formation and battle of forms scenario, firm offer rule, notice provisions, fundamental breach, excuse, remedies and damages, among other provisions. The Conference will show in what ways the CISG is pro-seller or pro-buyer and how to use this knowledge in the negotiation and drafting of an international sales contract. The Conference will also provide a review of the English Sales of Goods Act, UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts, and an update on the new trade terms manual-INCOTERMS 2010, as well as the issue of recovering attorney fees. The contributors come from twenty (20) different counties and include internationally-known CISG scholars, practicing attorneys, and representatives from the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). Some of the questions to be answered include:

- How has the CISG evolved? Why it is important?
- What are the best sources for CISG law? How does one conduct research in international sales law?
- How is the CISG different from the Uniform Commercial Code, English Sale of Goods Act, and other national laws?
- How have substantive provisions of the CISG been interpreted and applied by national court systems and arbitral panels?
- What are the problems of uniform law?
- Can the differences between the common law and civil law be overcome in the application of the CISG?
- Why should legal practitioners embrace or partially embrace the CISG in serving their clients?
- How should one negotiate and draft an international sales contract.

REGISTRATION: There is a nominal fee for academics or students (not including dinner and event fees), unless taking for Florida CLE credit (14.5 for both days). You may register online at:

http://conferences.dce.ufl.edu/SalesLaw/reg.aspx

Or contact: Jeri Shell at: jshell@dce.ufl.edu

AGENDA & PRESENTERS: The Conference Agenda and List of Presenters are as follows:

Session 1 - History & Researching the CISG
- Vikki Rogers - "History of CISG & CISG at the Present"
- Marie Newman - "CISG Sources and Researching the CISG"
- Camilla Baasch Andersen - "CISG in National Court Systems"
- Lisa Spagnolo - "CISG as Soft Law & Choice of Law"
- Andre Janssen - "CISG Use in Commercial Arbitration"

Session 2 - Interpreting the CISG & Substantive Provisions
- Franco Ferrari - "General Principles and Interpretive Methodology"
- Francesco Mazzotta - "Principle of Good Faith"
- Morton Midtgaard Fogt - "Contract Formation"
- Bruno Zeller - "Battle of the Forms"

Session 3 - Substantive Provisions
- Harry Flechtner - "Conformity of Goods: Inspection and Notice"
- Alastair Mullis - "Fundamental Breach and Nachfrist Notice"
- Ulrich Magnus - "Remedies: Price Reduction Remedy, Avoidance, Damages, Litigation, & Preservation"
- Martin Davies - "Excuse (Impediment)"
- Burghard Piltz - "CISG, INCOTERMS 2010, & Attorney Fees"

Session 4 - Country Analyses
- Wolfgang Faber - "Austria"
- Stefan Kroll - "Germany I"
- Soerren Kiene - "Germany II"
- Sonja Kruisinga - "The Netherlands"
- Milena Djordjevic -"The Balkans"

Session 5 - Country Analyses
- Corinne Widmer Luechinger - "Switzerland"
- Edoardo Ferrante - "Italy"
- Tadas Klimas - "Baltic States, Belarus, Bulgaria & Ukraine"
- Robert W. Emerson - "United States - Canada"
- Virginia G. Maurer - "Central & South America"

Session 6A - Country Analyses
- Li Wei - "Peoples' Republic of China"
- Yehuda Adar - "Israel"
- Hossam A. El-Saghir - "Islamic Legal Systems & the CISG"

Session 6B - Insights
- Jan Smits - "Problems with Uniform Laws"
- Sieg Eiselen - "Bridge Between Civil and Common Law"

Session 7 - CISG in Context
- Olaf Meyer - "Using the CISG in Practice"
- Qi Zhou - "CISG and the English Sale of Goods Act"
- Luca Castellani - "CISG in Context: Complementary Texts"

Session 8 - Practitioner's Perspective
- Keith Rowley - "Is the CISG Pro-Seller and/or Pro-Buyer?"
- Ulrich Schroeter - "To Exclude, to Ignore or to Use? Empirical Evidence on Courts', Parties', and Counsels' Approach to the CISG (with some Remarks on Professional Liability)"
- Helena Haapio - "Using the CISG Proactively"

Note: This Schedule is subject to change.

CONFERENCE HOTEL: Hilton University of Florida Hotel and Conference, Gainesville, Florida. There is a limited bloc of rooms reserved at the rate of $119 per night. The homepage for the Hotel is:

http://www1.hilton.com/en_US/hi/hotel/GVNCCHF-Hilton-University-of-Florida-Conference-Center-Gainesville-Florida/index.do

Location and phone number: 1714 SW 34th Street, Gainesville, FL, United States 32607; Tel: 1-352-371-3600. If you have any questions or problems with reservations please contact Jeri Shell at: jshell@dce.ufl.edu

[JT]

Wisconsin Contracts Conference, October 21-22, 2011

To be held at the Wisconsin Law School:

The title of the conference is: Empirical and Lyrical: Revisiting the Contracts Scholarship of Stewart Macaulay.  A website with details about the conference, including a draft program and a brief description of paper topics, has been established at  http://law.wisc.edu/ils/2011contractsconf/homepage.html.  Sixteen papers will be presented at the conference, by the following scholars: David Campbell, Robert W. Gordon, Ethan Leib, Brian Bix, Jay Feinman,  Gillian Hadfield, Claire Hill, Charles Knapp, Deborah Post, Edward Rubin, Carol Sanger, Robert Scott, D. Gordon Smith, Josh Whitford and Li-Wen Lin, John Wightman and William Woodward.  The conference will conclude with a banquet on Saturday, October 22, at which Stewart Macaulay will give a talk.  The conference papers will later be published as a book.

    All faculty and academic staff at any university are welcome to attend.  There is no conference fee.  Pre-registration is required for the conference and for the conference banquet.  For more information, including housing information, see the website linked above.  Questions about registration, housing, etc., should be directed to Pam Hollenhorst, Conference Coordinator, at pshollen@wisc.edu.  Other questions about the conference should be directed to Bill Whitford, at whitford@mailplus.wisc.edu.

Jean Braucher, University of Arizona Law College

John Kidwell, Wisconsin Law School

Bill Whitford, Wisconsin Law School

[JT]

Lipshaw's Intro to the "Contract as Promise" Symposium

Back in March, Suffolk University Law School hosted a symposium commemorating the 30th Anniversary of Charles Fried's book "Contract as Promise."  (You can download the lectures for free from iTunes).  The papers will be published in the Suffolk Law Review.

It was an enriching day of panels featuring many prominent contract theorists, so it was no small task for Professor Jeffrey Lipshaw to introduce the volume of the Suffolk Law Review containing the essays.  But, as he proves in this intro essay, no feat is too great for Prof. Lipshaw.  Here's the abstract:

This is an introductory essay to the volume of the Suffolk Law Review containing the papers from our symposium centered on Charles Fried’s iconic book, 'Contract as Promise' at 30: The Future of Contract Theory. My theme is the relation of theory to practice, particularly in contract law, and why a theoretical orientation, broadly speaking and whether or not so conceived by the practitioner herself, is fundamental to that practitioner making good judgments. Theorizing - imposing coherent and correspondent conceptual order on events in the real world - is not as unrelated to the ordinary work of lawyers (and others) as some critics of legal academy would suggest. I provide a summary of the papers, presentations, and commentary by the distinguished participating scholars, and consider how their work fits within the framework I describe. Finally, I consider the role of meaning in contract theory; in other words, how both descriptive and normative theory, whether directed to the legal institution of contract or to other phenomena, are all ways of making sense of the human condition, and thus an essential part of what practicing “lawyers-theorists” do every day.

[Meredith R. Miller]

Call for Papers on the Fringe Economy

Better late than never: here a call for papers from the Washington & Lee Law Review

The symposium Regulation in the Fringe Economy represents the most significant attempt to date by legal scholars to address the vexing legal and social issues created by lenders on the fringes of the economy who offer payday, auto title, for-profit college, and refund anticipation loans. A complete list of confirmed participants and their paper topics is available at the conference website.

The Frances Lewis Law Center and the Washington and Lee Law Review are delighted to sponsor this conference which will take place on November 11, 2011 at the Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia. The Washington and Lee Law Review will publish a symposium issue featuring the conference papers in 2012.

The sponsors’ goal is to encourage and recognize excellent legal scholarship in this area. To advance their goal, the sponsors invite lawyers, judges, and scholars to submit papers on regulation in the fringe economy. Papers on related high-risk consumer financial products are also encouraged. An author should submit his or her manuscript in an exclusive submission on or before August 15, 2011. A submission should be no longer than 50 pages or 15,000 words. A limited number of submissions will be accepted. Authors will be notified of the acceptance of their paper and participation in the symposium no later than August 20, 2011.

Selected authors will present their papers at the November 11 conference. All participants are asked to provide their own travel expenses. Papers specifying the conference may be mailed to the Washington and Lee Law Review or sent electronically to lawreview@wlu.edu. The Law Review Articles Editors and Washington and Lee University School of Law Professor Margaret Howard will review the papers.

Even if you are not able to submit a paper, the sponsors invite you to attend the conference. There will be no charge for attending. The Frances Lewis Law Center is a licensed Virginia Continuing Legal Education provider which will supply Virginia CLE credit for those attending.

Mallory A. Sullivan
Symposium Editor, Washington and Lee Law Review

Christine M. Shepard
Editor in Chief, Washington and Lee Law Review

We are happy to see that the confirmed participants in the conference include, among others, friends of the blog Jean Braucher and Alan White.

[JT] 

Hottest Download Ever!

The proceedings of the symposium held on March 25, 2011 at Suffolk University Law School, Contract as Promise at 30:  The Future of Contract Theory, are now available for free download from iTunes.

If you click on the link below, the Suffolk page will open in iTunesU.  Click on the icon for Continuing Legal Education, and you'll get a list of interesting podcasts for download, including the four panels, introduction, and closing session of the symposium.

http://itunes.apple.com/institution/suffolk-university/id388450120

The twelve minute segment contains Prof. Fried's opening remarks.

The other segments are:

How Moral Can a Contract Be?

Barbara Fried (Stanford), "What's Morality Got to Do With It?  The Limits of Non-consequentialism in Contract Theory"
Randy Barnett (Georgetown), "Contract is Not Promise; Contract is Consent"

Jean Braucher (Arizona), "The Sacred and the Profane Contract Machine:  The Complex Morality of Contract Law in Action"

Gregory Klass (Georgetown), “Promises, Etc.”

Commenter:  T.M. Scanlon (Harvard)  


Ethics and Economics of Promising

Richard Craswell (Stanford), "Promises, Prices, and Pluralism"
Avery W. Katz (Columbia), "Virtue Ethics and Efficient Breach"

Daniel Markovits/Alan Schwartz (Yale), "The Expectation Remedy and the Promissory Basis of Contract"

George Triantis (Harvard), "Promissory Autonomy, Imperfect Courts, and the Immorality of the Expectation Damages Default" 

Commenter:  Seana Shiffrin (UCLA)

Promise Theory, Extended, Applied, and Critiqued
Juliet Kostritsky (Case Western), "The Promise Principle and Contract Interpretation"

Lisa Bernstein (Chicago), "Merchant Contract as Promise"

John C.P. Goldberg (Harvard)/CurtisBridgeman (Florida State), "Contract, Tort, and Promise"

Rachel Arnow-Richman (Denver) "A Contract Theory of Employment"

Commenter:  Carol Chomsky (Minnesota)

The Future of Contract Theory

Henry E. Smith (Harvard), "The Equitable Dimension of Contract"

Roy Kreitner (Tel Aviv), "On the New Pluralism in Contract Theory"

Nathan Oman (William & Mary), "Promise and Private Law"

Commenter:  Robert Scott (Columbia)

The remaining segment is Prof. Fried's response/reaction at the end of the day.

[JT, w/ hat tip to Jeff Lipshaw]

Grab Some Popcorn....

Thanks to the good folks at Stetson, many of the panels from the Sixth Annual Contracts Conference at Stetson are now available for your viewing pleasure.

[Meredith R. Miller]



Suffolk Breaks The Mold!

Greetings from Boston!  Following brief greetings from Dean Camille Nelson, Suffolk Law Review EiC Tyler Sparrow, and conference organizer Jeff Lipshaw, Charles Fried, whose Contract as Promise inspired today's conference, offered some initial warmly-received comments about what inspired him to write Contract as Promise three decades ago (irritation at arguments Grant Gilmore made in his Death of Contract and Patrick Atiyah made in his classic The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract about the nature of contractual obligations and "sound" and "unsound" jurisprudential approaches to understanding and analyzing contractual obligations), and promised to say more at the end of the day -- taking advantage of an opportunity unavailable to the subjects of most such "memorials."

Then came the realization that the first panel wasn't quite ready to go because the conference was running ten minutes ahead of schedule.  How promising!  We'll see whether the gap between the schedule and real time contracts as the day progresses.

 

[Keith A. Rowley]

Cleveland-Marshall Global Business Law Review Symposium

Cleveland State University Cleveland-Marshall College of Law’s Global Business Law Review proudly announces its 2^nd Annual Symposium to be held on April 1, 2011.  This year’s symposium is titled International Arbitration: Practice and Modern Developments and will feature internationally respected scholars and practitioners.   

Speakers: 

Joshua Fellenbaum, Associate, Mannheimer Swartling – Overview of Investment Arbitration

Ken Adamo, Partner, Jones Day – Overview of International Arbitration in an Intellectual Property Context

Mitchell L. Lathrop, Member, Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky, & Popeo – Jurisdictional Issues in International Arbitration

George M. von Mehren, Partner, Squire, Sanders, & Dempsey – Is International Arbitration Becoming too American?

Thomas Carbonneau, Professor of Law, Penn State Dickinson School of Law – The Impact of Judicial Supervision on the Destiny of International Commercial Arbitration

While visiting the site, you are invited to view last year’s symposium edition and to check back later this spring for our upcoming edition.

[JT]

Miami Herald on Strategic Default in South Florida

Fortuitously, while I was in St. Petersburg blabbing about presenting on strategic default and the tension between morality and efficiency, the Miami Herald ran a long article "The Curse of Negative Home Equity."  The article focuses on South Florida's housing "tailspin" and the temptation of strategic default. Here's a taste:

As more than $113 billion worth of home equity has vanished from South Florida’s housing market in the past five years, the number of homeowners with mortgages that are larger than the values of their properties has become enormous. More than 300,000 South Florida mortgages—or 43 percent of them—are currently underwater, the highest level in decades, if not ever. That’s about four times the number of homes in foreclosure.

The underwater problem has been a thorn in the side of a housing market plagued with tight credit, record-high foreclosures and high unemployment. It has contributed to a deluge of loan modification requests, pushed up the foreclosure rate and helped revive a once-taboo exit strategy—the strategic default.

You can read the rest of the article here.

[Meredith R. Miller]

International Conference on Globalization and Development in Dar es Salaam

The University of Dar es Salaam Business School in Tanzania has issued a call for papers for:

International Conference on Globalization and Development:
Developing Countries’ Perspectives

The conference will provide a forum for academicians and practitioners from all corners of the globe to critically address these issues with the aim of coming up with suggestions that will lead to solutions that can help to improve the lot of developing countries.The main theme of the conference is: Promoting Trade Competitiveness in Developing Countries.

Papers to be submitted can therefore focus on any of the following sub-themes:

• Domestic Market Integration
• Market access Conditions in Emerging Markets 
• Export promotion in Developing Countries 
• Export Supply and Competitiveness 
• Natural Resources and Competitive Advantage 
• Trade in Services and its Implications in Developing Countries 
• Industrial and Trade Policies Complementarities in Developing Countries 
• Foreign Direct Investments in Africa 
• Chinese Investments in Africa 
• Regional Economic Integrations 
• SMEs Development and Foreign Trade Performance 
• Aid for Trade and Development 
• Agricultural Trade and Poverty Alleviation 
• Other contemporary Issues on International Trade and Agreements

Target participants include academicians, practitioners, policy makers and others interested in internationalization and developmental issues.

Important Dates:

• Abstract Submission Deadline: May 15th, 2011 
• Full Paper Submission Deadline: July 30th, 2011 
• Deadline for registration: August 30th, 2011 
• Conference dates: 22nd – 23rd September, 2011

Submissions of Abstracts and Papers should be addressed to:

icgd@udbs.udsm.ac.tz

OUR CONTACTS
University of Dar-es-Salaam Business School
P.O. Box 35046
Dar-es-Salaam TANZANIA
Phone: +255-22-2410006
Fax: +255 22 241 0510
Email: icgd@udbs.udsm.ac.tz
cc: wineaster@udbs.udsm.ac.tz

More information is available here.

[JT]

Forty-Five Left on a Boat, But Only Thirty-Six Came Back…

It’s been an eventful twenty-four hours at the Sixth International Contracts Conference at Stetson University Law School filled with contracts theory, insightful presentations, and a triumph of the human will.  The Professors embarked on a one hour boat tour, but ended up waylaid on the sandbar, rather like Prof. Bruno Zeller’s pants.  In Telman-style, Profs. Nancy Ota (Albany) and Emily Houh (Cincinnati) came up with some limericks in order to celebrate the adventure:

We were gathering to honor Macauley.  

Jamie Fox had planned for most folly.

But we boarded a boat

That could not stay afloat

How we wished we had taken a trolley.

 

They were talking of contracts in action

Until the sand caused too much traction.

Nine jumped the boat.

Others hoped it would float

After which they would sue the captain.

 

Jamie Fox has good reason to gloat

A great conference plus a night on a boat.

So here’s a small token,

Our gratitude unspoken

A reminder to find a deep moat.

[Meredith Miller / Miriam Cherry]

Greetings from Stetson!

The first panel of the 6th International Conference on Contracts is off and running with Jean Braucher (Arizona), Carol Chomsky (Minnesota), Victor Goldberg (Columbia), and Bill Woodward (Temple) discussing some of conference honoree Stewart Macaulay's contracts and pedagogical scholarship, the insights and impact of Stewart's "law in action" casebook and related scholarship, including but not limited to the importance of contextualizing contracts, contract disputes, and contract law, and Stewart's personal impact on the contracts professoriate over the past 50 years.

More to come ...

[Keith A. Rowley] 

6th Annual Contracts Conference Program

This year's annual contract law fiesta begins tomorrow at Steston in Gulfport, Florida.   You can download the fun-filled 2-day program here.  

I'm hoping there's time between sessions for a dip in the law school swimming pool.

[Meredith R. Miller]

 

Restitution Rollout and Washington & Lee

Washington and Lee University School of Law and the American Law Institute are pleased to sponsor a conference, Restitution Rollout: Restatement (Third) of Restitution and Unjust Enrichment, on February 25, 2011 in Lexington, Virginia. 

The American Law Institute (ALI), the leading legal-reform organization in the United States, restates basic legal subjects to inform the legal profession what "the law" is in a particular subject. In 2010, the ALI approved the Restatement (Third) Restitution and Unjust Enrichment (2011), the subject of our Restitution Rollout.

Restatement Third restores the full title, Restitution and Unjust Enrichment, that appeared on the Tentative Drafts of the original Restatement but was dropped when the official text was published, thus emphasizing that the subject matter encompasses the independent body of law of unjust enrichment, and not simply the remedy of restitution.

At the conference, ALI Reporter Andrew Kull and ALI Director Lance Liebman will introduce the Restatement Third of Restitution. They will be joined by leading Restitution and Contracts scholars including Joe Perillo, Lionel Smith, Peter Linzer, and Caprice Roberts, among others.

Sponsored by the W&L Frances Lewis Law Center, the American Law Institute, and the W&L Law Review. CLE credit available.

For the full seminar agenda and biographies of the participants, you can click on the conference link above.

[JT]

Conference Announcement: Contract as Promise at 30

In honor of the 30th anniversary of the publication of Charles Fried's Contract as Promise, the Suffolk University Law School will be hosting a conference on March 25, 2011.  Conference details, including a full agenda/schedule, are available here,  From their website, here is the introduction:

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

In 1981, Professor Charles Fried published a book on contract theory entitled Contract as Promise. For almost thirty years, the book has been the seminal work on the moral or deontological justification for the state's enforcement of private promises. No scholarly discussion of the field can be complete without addressing its claims, whether one agrees or not with its original and provocative stand. Suffolk University Law School will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the book's publication with a day-long symposium. Distinguished contract theorists will offer papers and commentary, followed by reflections from Professor Fried. Participants presently scheduled include the Honorable Richard Posner, Randy Barnett, Barbara Fried, T.M. Scanlon, Jean Braucher, Richard Craswell, Jody Kraus, Carol Chomsky, Avery Katz, Henry Smith, Lisa Bernstein, Seana Shiffrin, Daniel Markovits, Juliet Kostritsky, John C.P. Goldberg, Rachel Arnow-Richman, Curtis Bridgeman, Nathan Oman, Roy Kreitner, Gregory Klass, and Robert Scott. This is an opportune moment to step back, review the alternative approaches to contract theory that have developed since 1981, and to offer views about future doctrinal or inter-disciplinary developments, whether based in moral philosophy, welfare economics, sociology, or other disciplines. The papers and proceedings will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Suffolk Law Review.

[JT]