I think the biggest myth about business law is that it’s a subject that is only of interest to the wealthy and powerful. This is as misguided as saying that the study of marine biology is only of interest to fish.
It’s important, first, because business is important. It’s the engine of economic growth and prosperity and the greatest practical hope for easing world poverty. But an unrestricted profit motive can also lead to wasteful and destructive activity. Successful, socially useful business depends on legal infrastructure: enforceable contracts; clearly defined property rights; a reliable and trustworthy judicial system; stable financial institutions; sensible legislation; and regulation to protect people from fraud, reckless and irresponsible behaviour and so on. Our economic system depends on those legal institutions and on legal professionals with a deep understanding of those institutions.
One major highlight is our visiting professors and visiting speaker series, which are second to none. Since 2007, Western Law has hosted three Nobel-Prize winning economists, a former U.S. treasury secretary, the former CEO of the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) and over two dozen of the world’s most prominent corporate law scholars. While at Western, a recent JD graduate was able to take business law courses taught by the top corporate scholars from Harvard, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford. No other law school in the world can make that claim — not even Harvard, Yale, Cambridge or Oxford, actually.
They’re crucial. To name just a few examples, Geoff Beattie was instrumental in establishing our annual business law lecture series and establishing the corporate law chair created in his name. Torys LLP has been a key donor — supporting, among other things, the Beattie Chair, the Torys Corporate and Securities Law Forum and the Torys Preeminent Business and Law series. Stephen Dattels and Cassels Brock have been pivotal to our mining law and finance initiatives. McCarthy Tétrault funded our popular law and economics speakers seminar. The list goes on. There are many, many more individual and firm supporters and donors to whom we are very grateful.
We need to be thoughtful in our approach to globalization. No self-respecting university president will tell alumni, “We’re striving to become more parochial.” Certainly our students must be at the forefront of global business law issues — and of course at Western they are. We have a diverse curriculum which engages with leading-edge, crossborder issues. We host prestigious international visiting scholars and offer terrific business law summer internship opportunities for students.
But law is, necessarily, jurisdiction-specific. So we should also celebrate the fact that we are a Canadian institution, an Ontario institution and a proud member of the London and Southwestern Ontario community.
Three new business law chairs have been announced, including a Canada Research Chair in Law and Economics. We’ve partnered with other Western faculties and departments, including Economics and the Ivey School, to launch the Centre for Financial Innovation and Risk Management and a new interdisciplinary Masters degree in Financial Economics. Two outstanding scholars have taught here as Richard H. McLaren Visiting Professors in Business Law — Reinier Kraakman (Harvard) and Roberta Romano (Yale). And we’re exploring enhancements to our business law specialization which we hope to unveil shortly.
Like a lot of other people, I’m reading Capital in the Twenty-First Century by the French economist Thomas Piketty. It’s a fascinating account detailing the historical changes in the concentration of income and wealth. Lawrence Summers recently wrote a review of the book in which he described Piketty as “as a rock star of the policy-intellectual world.” Piketty’s argument, in a nutshell, is that “r” (the rate of return on capital) is greater than “g”, the economic growth rate, which means that gains for the holders of capital (the wealthy) are outpacing the gains of income earners and that we should expect this to continue.
Income inequality has become a kind of defining issue for the early 21st Century. Certainly it is an issue that President Obama has embraced. It’s something that can’t be ignored, although it is a much more complex issue than some people think. For example, as Summers has pointed out, the greatest increase in income inequality has actually occurred between the top 0.1 per cent and the rest of the top 10 per cent. None of the pat explanations for rising income inequality — like disparity in education or social background — have much explanatory power when you consider that the greatest increases are occurring between groups whose members all have pretty similar educational achievements and social backgrounds.
As a professional school, we certainly want to give our students the foundational knowledge and skills they need to contribute to the profession. But we are also a university faculty. And that means that providing “nuts and bolts” practical training can never be our primary role.
The university is a place for reflection and critical thinking and questioning. We have to strike the right balance between “job ready” training and developing a theoretical perspective through critical reflection. Sometimes practitioners find that puzzling or even a bit infuriating, but a university law faculty simply can’t focus on preparing our graduates to excel during their first few months as articling students. We are playing the “long game” for our students. Christopher Nicholls is the Stephen Dattels Chair in Corporate Finance Law at Western Law and director of the Business Law program.
Christopher Nicholls is the Stephen Dattels Chair in Corporate Finance Law at Western Law and director of the Business Law program.
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