Law & Econ Prof Blog

Technology, Again

I am fascinated by the manner in which technology solves a set of problems, creates a new set of (usually, lesser) problems, and keeps pushing on.  Yesterday's New York Times had a marvelous article -- Christopher Maag, "Technology: The Stealthy Tattletale," available here -- about the ways in which Global Positioning System (GPS) technology is making theft more difficult.  Banks now put BPS transponders, rather than dye packs, in the bundles of cash that they give robbers.  And luxury car owners can now disable their cars remotely.  What's next? 
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Street Crime in Japan and How to Evade It

Today's New York Times has a marvelous story on a recent suggestion for evading street crime in Japan -- disguise yourself as a vending machine.  See here. 
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Web Conference

LIVE Webcast of “The Mystery of Delaware Law’s Success” featuring Chancellor William B. Chandler III

 

The University of Illinois College of Law Program in Business Law and Policy presents a LIVE webcast of “The Mystery of Delaware Law’s Success,” featuring Chancellor William B. Chandler III of the Delaware Court of Chancery on Friday, October 19 from 3-5 p.m. central time. The event will be held in the Max L. Rowe Auditorium at the University of Illinois College of Law (504 East Pennsylvania Ave., Champaign, IL).   

Reponses to Chancellor Chandler’s remarks will be provided by Professor William Carney, the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University; Professor Larry Ribstein, the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair at the University of Illinois; and, Professor Robert Thompson, the New York Alumni Chancellor's Professor of Law and Vanderbilt University.

 

You can watch the conference LIVE via webcast through Windows Media Player. Just click - File>>Open URL - and type in http://130.126.84.45:2075  and you will be connected live to the conference. 

The Honorable William B. Chandler III was appointed Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery in 1997, where he had served as Vice Chancellor since 1989. He also served as Resident Judge of the Delaware Superior Court from 1985 to 1989. The Delaware Court of Chancery is widely recognized as the nation's preeminent forum for the determination of disputes involving the internal affairs of the thousands of Delaware  corporations and other business entities through which a vast amount of the world's commercial affairs is conducted.  The Delaware  corporations and other business entities through which a vast amount of the world's commercial affairs is conducted. The Delaware Court of Chancery is a non-jury trial court that serves as Delaware's court of original and exclusive equity jurisdiction, and adjudicates a wide variety of cases involving trusts, real property, guardianships, civil rights, and commercial litigation.   

Before his appointment to the Court, Chancellor Chandler was an associate with Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell and he served as Legal Counsel to former Governor Pete duPont. The Chancellor taught commercial law, legislative process, and remedies for two years at the University of Alabama School of Law. He is presently a member of the American Law Institute and the Delaware Bar Association. Chancellor Chandler received his law degrees from the University of South Carolina School of Law and the Yale Law School and his undergraduate degree from the University of Delaware. 

Conventional wisdom has held that  Delaware corporate law is chosen by the majority of incorporating businesses because of its fully developed corporate code, which is richly and continuously interpreted by numerous cases decided by an intelligent and experienced judiciary. Recent commentators have criticized this argument, pointing to weaknesses in both Delaware statutory law and common law. In this discussion, supporters and critics will share their theories of the secrets to Delaware's success. 

 

The Panelists

Professor William Carney is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at  Emory University, specializing in business associations, securities regulation, and corporate law. He is a well-known author, lecturer, and teacher in corporate law and the author of two leading casebooks on Corporate Finance and Mergers & Acquisitions, along with several other books and more than 50 articles and book chapters. He was a partner in the  Denver firm of Holland & Hart and served as a professor at Wyoming, Michigan, Virginia, Antwerp, Belgium, the Technical University of Dresden, and the American Law Center in Moscow.   He holds a U.S. patent application on a novel takeover defense. He has served as chair of the Corporate Code Revision Committee and as a member of the Executive Committee of the Corporate Section of the State Bar of Georgia. Professor Carney earned his B.A. and LL.B. from Yale.

Professor Larry Ribstein is the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law at the University of Illinois.  He is the author of leading treatises on limited liability companies, partnership law, and limited liability partnerships, as well as two business associations casebooks. Professor Ribstein is the co-author, with Henry Butler, of The Sarbanes-Oxley Debacle and The Constitution and the Corporation. From 1998-2001 he was co-editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review. Ribstein has written or co-authored approximately 120 articles on subjects including corporate, securities and partnership law, constitutional law, bankruptcy, film, the internet, family law, professional ethics and licensing, uniform laws, choice of law and jurisdictional competition. His articles during the past year have focused on Sarbanes-Oxley, corporate social responsibility, fiduciary duties in partnerships, fiduciary duties of corporate directors, the history of corporate and partnership law, the implications of behavioral finance for securities regulation, journalism and the portrayal of business in film. Ribstein's article, Are Partners Fiduciaries? was selected by a vote of corporate and securities laws scholars as one of the best articles of 2005.

Professor Robert Thompson is the New York Alumni's Chancellor Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. Professor Thompson is one of the nation's top scholars in corporations law, corporate finance and securities regulation. The author of a number of leading books and articles, many including innovative empirical research, in these and related fields, Professor Thompson has testified before committees of Congress, a state legislature, and the New York Stock Exchange. He has served since 1991 as editor of the Corporate Practice Commentator, served as an adviser for the American Law Institute's Restatement (Third) of Agency and chaired two sections of the Association of American Law Schools. During 2004-05, he was chair of  Vanderbilt University's  Faculty Senate. A dedicated teacher, Professor Thompson teaches corporations, securities regulation, and co-teaches joint law and business courses on equity markets and business mergers and acquisitions. He joined the law faculty in 2000 from Washington University School of Law, where he was George Alexander Madill Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies.   

 

There is no registration fee for the lecture by Chancellor William Chandler. Please RSVP for the lecture via e-mail to Professor Christine Hurt, Director, University of Illinois  Program in Business Law and Policy at achurt@law.uiuc.edu. 

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Advice for a New Law School

Paul Caron of the University of Cincinnati School of Law and Bill Henderson of the Indiana University School of Law had the very good idea of asking several people what advice they would give Erwin Chemerinsky, the new Dean at the new Bren School of Law at UC-Irvine, about distinguishing his law school.  The very interesting responses are available here. 

Here's what I wrote: 

I have tried to think of a change in legal education that is feasible, both politically and financially, but transformative. Here it is: create a required third-year capstone course in which the students would be divided into small groups of 10 – 20 to address all the legal and other dimensions of a model legal issue. The instructors, on whom there would be great demands both before and during the course, would design a complex, realistic problem that would call on the students to bring together all of their skills – negotiation, research, organization, substantive and procedural law, litigation management, client counseling, political sensitivity, and more.

Consider this example. The City of Sandifer has decided to build a new 40,000-seat stadium for the Sandifer Cougars, a reasonably successful Major League Baseball franchise. The student firm has been retained to counsel the City and the Cougars through the process of getting the stadium built. They must acquire a suitable piece of property for the new stadium. They must hire an architect to design the stadium and a prime contractor to build it. They must try to persuade the State government to subsidize the costs of the stadium and then help in preparing the bond issue that will be floated. There will be litigation about some matters, and there will be high political heat.

This intense exercise could bring together all the learning of the previous two years of law school and send the 3Ls into practice with some enthusiasm.

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