Joining the Team: Mark Edwin Burge (Texas A&M)

Changes are underway at the ContractsProf Blog, and I am delighted to be one of them.  Thanks to Myanna Dellinger for giving me the opportunity to join a team building on over a decade of quality content established by our founder (and my faculty colleague) Frank Snyder, outgoing editor Jeremy Telman, and many others throughout the years.

Who is this guy, anyway? Glad you asked. I am an Associate Professor of Law at Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth, proud home for two years of the esteemed International Conference of Contracts that, as Jeremy mentioned here, has been closely associated with this blog since its inception. My major scholarly interests are in contracts (seriously, did you think I would NOT say "contracts" here?), commercial law (especially payment systems), and the interaction of both fields with legal skills and practice. I came to the academy after eight years of practice in the areas of business and commercial litigation and related transactions. Despite some occasional flirtations with theory, I have yet to shake off my greater interest in how lawyers actually make things work. So I've learned to live with that, and I'm most fortunate to be at a law school with colleagues and an administration who support the grab-bag of things I do.

My current work, which I hope to discuss here occasionally (while skillfully avoiding off-putting narcissism in the process), involves the intersection of private contract law with public regulation in the rapidly developing area of emerging payment systems. Where exactly are the best dividing lines between private and public law, especially in an age where the lag between technology and law seriously strains the institutional capacity of legal systems? Perhaps we can find some answers to that overarching question and have some fun along the way. I should, in the interest of full disclosure, confess that I think contract law is fun.

I look forward to the adventure, and I appreciate anyone who is along for the ride.