Harvard law scholar is visiting professor in Business Law
March 14, 2012
One
of the world’s most prolific and influential corporate legal academics
visited Western Law as the inaugural holder of the Richard H. McLaren
Visiting Professorship in Business Law.
Reinier H. Kraakman (pictured left) of Harvard University taught a course at Western Law entitled, “U.S. Takeover Law in a Comparative Perspective” to upper year JD students in March 2012.
“We are continuing to build upon our strength in business law and we are thrilled this professorship has enabled us to recruit a scholar of such international standing in this field,” says Dean Iain Scott.
Kraakman is the Ezra Ripley Thayer Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and his research interests include: Business Law; Comparative Company Law; Corporate Governance; Corporate Takeovers; Limited Liability; Shareholder-derivative Suits; and Third-party Enforcement Strategies.
He is the author or co-author of some of the world’s most
frequently-cited scholarly articles on corporate law including, among
many others, (with Henry Hansmann (Yale)) “The End of History for
Corporate Law” 89 Georgetown Law Journal 439, “The Essential Role of
Organizational Law” 110 Yale Law Journal 387 and “Organizational Law as
Asset Partitioning” 44 European Economic Review 807; and (with Ronald
Gilson (Stanford)) “The Mechanisms of Market Efficiency” 70 Virginia Law
Review 549. He is also a co-editor and co-author of the groundbreaking
comparative corporate law book, The Anatomy of Corporate Law (Oxford
University Press), now in its second edition.
“We’re delighted
Professor Kraakman has accepted our invitation to become Western Law’s
first Richard H. McLaren Visiting Professor in Business Law,” says
Professor Christopher Nicholls. “His course is a wonderful opportunity
for our students to engage with a leading international scholar, and his
visit is a fitting tribute to Richard McLaren’s unparalleled
contribution to Canadian business law education.”
The visiting
professorship honours Western Law professor Richard McLaren - an
inspirational teacher and mentor to hundreds of Western Law students
known as ‘McLarenites’. A member of Western’s law faculty since 1972,
his expertise in the areas of commercial, bankruptcy and business law
has resulted in publications that are regarded as leading scholarly
works in their fields.
McLaren has also been an arbitrator in
five Olympic Games and numerous anti-doping disputes for both amateur
and professional organizations.
The McLaren Visiting
Professorship was formally launched in Toronto on March 9 where Kraakman
delivered a lecture hosted by Goodmans LLP entitled “The U.S. Housing
Market Crisis and the Efficient Capital Market Hypothesis”.
Allan
Leibel, Partner at Goodmans LLP, delivered welcoming remarks on behalf
of the firm. Guests at the lecture included Western Law alumni from
Goodmans, Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, and Wildeboer
Dellelce LLP as well as senior faculty from the law school.
Dean
Iain Scott thanked Davies LLP, Goodmans LLP and The Kavelman-Fonn
Foundation for their major gifts in support of this professorship and
acknowledged the many alumni and friends who generously donated to the
project.
“It is because of your generous support of the Richard
H. McLaren Visiting Professorship in Business Law that we are able to
bring world-class scholars such as Professor Kraakman to Western Law to
teach and provide advanced scholarship in the area of business law,” he
said.
