• Center on Business Law & Policy Cocktail Mixer

City Hall Restaurant, March 6, 2008

• The Lawrence Lederman Lecture Series with Philip Howard

Philip Howard, a partner at Covington & Burling LLP and founder of the organization "Common Good," spoke about "Lawsuits and Liberty."  Philip K. Howard is the author of The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America (Random House 1995) and The Collapse of the Common Good: How America's Lawsuit Culture Undermines Our Freedom (Ballantine 2002). He is a periodic contributor to the op-ed pages of The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and speaks before judicial, government, and professional organizations around the country. In the Oxford Companion To American Law, Howard contributed the section on American law since 1968. He is the Vice-Chairman of Covington & Burling and a prominent civic leader in New York.

Howard has advised leaders of both parties on reform initiatives. He was special advisor to the Securities and Exchange Commission on regulatory simplification, worked on environmental and management reforms with Vice President Al Gore's reinventing government program, advised the Republican leadership on regulatory reform, and worked on overhauling civil service and other bureaucratic institutions with several governors, including Zell Miller in Georgia, Bill Weld in Massachusetts and Jeb Bush and Lawton Chiles in Florida. 

February 21, 2008

• Corporate Social Responsibility, Accountability, Ethics, and Human Rights Seminar Series

 The seminar series, conducted by Professor Sheldon Leader,  focuses on human rights responsibilities of private companies and public and private institutions providing finances for projects in development in various parts of the world.  It examines the clash and complementarily aspects between the core objectives of these institutions and the demands of human rights protection and environmental sustainability.

Click here to download the Brochure for this event 

Seminar One: Corporations & Human Rights: the Framework

The seminar discusses the principles governing human rights and corporate interest and where they diverge and where they potentially complement one another.  The seminar also looks how to apply these principles, including the possibility of “internalizing” certain basic rights into the corporate constitution, so that protecting those rights are part of the officers fiduciary responsibilities.

January 28, 2008

Seminar Two: Corporate Investments Impact on the Developing World: the State

The seminar examines investment treaties and contracts and their impact on host government’s ability to manage domestic social policies.  It will focus on Host Government Agreements, including the example of the BTC pipeline and an innovation in its legal regime known as the Human Rights Undertaking.  Professor Sheldon Leader, Visiting Professor at New York Law School, will lead the discussion with attorneys Thomas Dimitroff and Andrea Shemberg.  The attorneys were responsible for the first legally binding human rights undertaking to be signed by a multinational corporation as part of its investment in one of the world’s  largest infrastructure projects – the BTC petroleum pipeline between the Caspian and Mediterranean.

February 11, 2008

Seminar Three: Corporate Structure, the Distribution of Power,
and Problems of Accountability

The seminar examines the fit between theories linking the responsibilities of entities within a corporate group and the issue of responsibility for the actions of subsidiaries in foreign jurisdictions.  It examines whether legal principles setting thresholds of control of one company by another are adequate for a policy of transnational responsibility.

February 25, 2008

Seminar Four: Corporate Investment Impact on the Developing World: Private & Public Lenders

The seminar examines public and private financing strategies and their social impact, including the requirements set by the Equator Principles and the International Finance Corporation.  Also, it will look at securing project revenue for the public good in the developing world.

March 10, 2008

• The Center on Business Law & Policy Luncheon for Harlan Scholars

January 23, 2008

• Master Class with Stephen Fraidin

  "Revlon Duties Updated: Go-Shop Clauses and Reverse Break-Up Fees"

  Thursday, November 29, 2007

   

• Robert Slee Speech on "Lawyers as Gatekeepers to the Capital Markets"

This presentation enables lawyers to "gatekeep" the private capital markets for business owners.  Attendees will be exposed to the structure of the private capital markets; the behavior of players in the markets; an approach for making value-added decisions in business; and strategies that create private business value.

Robert Slee is Managing Director of Robertson & Foley, a middle market investment banking firm.  He is the author of Private Capital Markets, a seminal work in privaate finance, and Midas Managers.  He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Miami Univeristy, and received a Master's degree from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Case Western Reserve University.

Monday, November 26, 2007

• Otto Walter Distinguished Chair International Tax Law Lecture Series Presents Professor Karen B. Brown

  "Can Cross-Border Distribution Serve the Caribbean Region?"

  November 14, 2007