Professors Johnson and Millon Featured at Corporate Social Responsibility Conference

Prof. Millon

W&L Law Professors Lyman Johnson and David Millon will be featured at a conference at the University of St. Thomas entitled “Law and the History of Corporate Social Responsibility” this Friday, April 26.

This one-day conference is co-sponsored by the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership, the Center for Ethical Business Cultures (CEBC), the University of St. Thomas School of Law, the Law Journal Symposium, and Opus College of Business. Scholars in law and business, members of the legal profession, and CEBC members discuss key topics and issues in the development of corporate law and the history of corporate responsibility. The event was inspired by the Fall 2012 publication of CEBC’s  landmark history: Corporate Responsibility: The American Experience, Cambridge University Press.

Prof. Lyman Johnson

When: Friday, April 26, 2013 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (A reception will follow this event.)

Where: Schulze Hall Auditorium, Opus College of Business, University of St. Thomas Minneapolis Campus 1000 LaSalle Ave.Minneapolis, MN 55403-2015

Prof. David Millon Discusses the Business Case for Social Responsibility

Prof. Millon

Professor David Millon, the  J.B. Stombock Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University, recently wrote a review of Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou, & George Serafeim, The Impact of a Corporate Culture of Sustainability on Corporate Behavior and Performance, Harvard Business School Working Paper 12-035 (2012). Here is an excerpt:

Those interested in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the problems of managerial and investor short-termism should not overlook the paper reviewed here.  Robert Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou, and George Serafeim (professors at Harvard, London, and Harvard business schools respectively) make an important contribution to debates among corporate law academics about CSR as an alternative to shareholder primacy.  Their paper also has significant relevance to those who are concerned about the costs of shareholder primacy’s current incarnation as an obsession with quarterly earnings and their effects on share prices.  The authors present a sophisticated, empirically grounded demonstration of the economic advantages enjoyed by corporations that have chosen to invest in stakeholder relationships and to pursue a long-run approach to wealth creation.  Because these companies are shown to outperform financially their more traditionally-minded, shareholder-primacy, short-term-oriented rivals, CSR advocates can assert a ‘business case’ for their belief that corporations should attend to the well-being of nonshareholding stakeholders, including employees, customers, local communities where the firm operates, and those who are affected by its impact on the environment.  The business case also lends support to critics of short-termism who have no particular interest in CSR.

A persuasive ‘business case’ for CSR is important because until now the large body of empirical research investigating its efficiency has yielded distinctly mixed results.  Further, the ‘ethical case’ for CSR gains limited traction among investors and managers seeking to maximize financial returns.  Progressives do need to bear in mind the limits of the business case:  it justifies investment in stakeholder well-being only to the extent that there is a financial payoff.  Nevertheless, there is no doubt that companies genuinely embracing a stakeholder orientation create more social value than those that do not, even if their motivation is primarily economic.

The full review is available at the Corporate Law JOTWEL at 
http://corp.jotwell.com
.

W&L Professors Johnson, Danforth, and Millon Post Piece on Third-Year Program

Professors Lyman Johnson, Robert Danforth, and David Millon have posted a piece discussing the third-year program at W&L Law.  The piece appears in Reforming Legal Education (Moss & Curtis, eds.).  Here is a description of the piece, which can be downloaded by visiting
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2139789
:

In early 2008, Washington and Lee fundamentally reformed the entire third year law school curriculum. The new curriculum broke with decades-long tradition by focusing entirely on student-centered, experiential learning. It also sharply distinguished the educational approach in the third year from that in the first and second years, thereby creating a strong sense of pedagogical progression. Finally, it more deliberately prepared students for the transition to practice and emphasized the importance of attending to the formation of a professional identity.

This article, a chapter in a new book − Reforming Legal Education (D. Moss & D. Curtis, eds., 2012) – describes in detail the substantive curricular changes made at Washington and Lee. But it also describes more process-oriented factors that are critical to successful curricular reform such as aligning proposed changes with a school’s or university’s larger strategic objectives so as to achieve true institutional “fit.” We also describe the importance of thoughtful implementation of reform, after adoption, through a phased-in “roll out” process. Finally, we relate how our curricular changes included, from the outset, a mandated mechanism for post-adoption assessment on an ongoing basis. Assurance of expected regular occasions for revisiting curricular reform can itself facilitate change and overcome initial resistance.

W&L Law Faculty Present at SEALS

Several Washington and Lee Law School faculty members presented last week at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS). In addition, David Millon, J. B. Stombock Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, took the helm as President of SEALS for the 2012-13 term.

In addition to his duties with the organization during the conference, Millon also served as a panelist in a session on how recent Supreme Court decisions and congressional legislation are affecting business and regulatory issues and in a discussion group focused on teaching business law in a new economic environment. Other presentations by W&L faculty included:

• Johanna Bond, who participated in a discussion group on contemporary issues in gender and the law.
• Christopher Bruner, who presented a paper during a panel on recent developments in corporate governance.
• Mark Drumbl, who participated in a discussion group on the growing importance of international matters to legal education.
• Jill Fraley, who presented her research on maps as legal arguments in a new scholars panel.
• Brant Hellwig, who participated in a discussion group on tax reform in 2012.
• John Keyser and Todd Peppers, who participated in a panel on social science and the law.
• J.D. King, who participated in a panel on implicit racial bias in the criminal justice system.
• Joan Shaughnessy, who served as a moderator of a new scholars panel.
• Robin Wilson, who participated in a panel on cutting edge issues in family law.

Prof. Millon SEALS President-Elect

Professor David Millon, the J. B. Stombock Professor of Law and Law Alumni Faculty Fellow at Washington and Lee University School of Law, was named president-elect of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) at its recent annual meeting. Millon will serve in this position during 2011-12 and will become president of the organization for the 2012-13 term.

Started in 1947, SEALS is comprised of 65 institutional member schools, 23 affiliate member schools and several foreign member schools. The primary activity of the organization is an annual legal conference held during the summer at a family-friendly venue. SEALS just completed its 64th annual meeting, which was attended by more than 500 scholars, the largest attendance in the history of the conference.

W&L Law faculty are very active within SEALS. This year Professors Christopher Bruner, Johanna Bond, Mark Drumbl, Jim Moliterno, Tim MacDonnell, Joshua Fairfield, and Robin Wilson all joined distinguished panels to present their research. In addition, John Keyser, Associate Dean for Administration and Technology, presented on teaching empirical methods, outcome measurement compliance and was also named chair of the conference technology committee.

The full press release can be found here.

Prof. Millon on Teaching Business Law

Professor David Millon, the J.B. Stombock Professor of Law, recently participated and contributed to a roundtable discussion on the popular blog, The Conglomerate, about teaching Business and Corporate Law. The group included Gordon Smith (BYU), Lisa Fairfax (George Washington), Afra Afsharipour (UC Davis), Kent Greenfield (Boston College), and Erik Gerding (Colorado).

Professor Millon wrote about W&L’s unique two course system, offering both Close Business Arrangements (CBA) and Publicly Held Businesses (PHB) as three-credit courses. The basic assumption, he said, is that the legal issues confronting the organization and management of privately owned, typically small businesses are different enough from those of large, publicly held firms to warrant separate courses. As a result, W&L has six hours, if a student takes both courses, to cover material that is typically taught in a four- (or even three-) credit survey. Prof. Millon also addressed the issue of Corporate Social Responsibility within the realm of PHB.

The entire roundtable discussion can be found here.

Prof. Millon on Organized Labor

Professor David Millon, the J.B. Stombock Professor of Law, recently published his article, Keeping Hope Alive, 68 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 369 (2011), in the Washington & Lee Law Review.

The short article is a review and discussion of Micah Jost’s article, Independent Contractors, Employees, and Entrepreneurialism Under the National Labor Relations Act: A Worker-by-Worker Approach, 68 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 311 (2011). Prof. Millon discusses the main battleground over unions, the legal distinction between “employees” and “independent contractors.” The right to unionize under the National Labor Relations ACT is limited only to employees, but no clear, bright-line definition of employee has emerged. Prof. Millon praises Jost’s article, stating that it “explains this confused area of law clearly and thoroughly.” He then proceeds to agree with Jost’s conclusions and suggestions.

Congratulations again to Micah Jost and to Professor Millon.

David Millon: Select Ecclesiastical Cases from the King’s Courts 1272-1307

Professor David Millon, the J.B. Stombock Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University, recently completed a project nearly thirty years in the making. What began in 1982 as dissertation for a Ph.D. in history from Cornell is now a published volume in a distinguished British legal history series published by the Selden Society.

The book, titled Select Ecclesiastical Cases from the King’s Courts 1272-1307, explores the relationship between the Catholic Church’s court system and the King’s common law courts during the reign of Edward I. In medieval times, these two fully developed court systems operated in parallel, the church court responsible for cases that involved sacraments, such as marriages, oaths, and tithes, and the King’s courts handling criminal, property, and other secular matters.

Millon says that these court systems were supposed to operate separately, but after laborious research examining case records on un-indexed latin plea rolls, concluded that many cases fell into a gray area where court jurisdiction was unclear. The period covered in the book was a time of significant church-state conflict in England and elsewhere in Europe, and scholars had assumed this would be reflected in the king’s courts’ handling of these jurisdictional controversies. However, Millon’s research shows that these high-level political conflicts did not work their way into the day-to-day operations of the court systems.

For the full article, click here.

Many congratulations to Professor Millon for this groundbreaking study into the history of our parallel court system.