AUSTIN, Texas — The second annual “Joint Conference on Commercial Realities” will be held April 28-29 in Cambridge, MA to provide a forum for emerging commercial-law scholars to meet and discuss their research.
This conference was created by Jay Westbrook of The University of Texas School of Law and Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School. It is intended to develop a generation of legal scholars who use the tools of empirical studies and research into other legal systems to help find solutions to the problems attendant upon the rapidly changing world of commerce.
The first conference, held in Austin in April 2005, brought together five senior
scholars to comment on papers by 13 emerging scholars. The process helped the
junior scholars meet potential mentors, exchange ideas, and investigate empirical
and comparative methods of research. Senior professors who took part in this
conference included Lynn LoPucki of UCLA, Robert Lawless of UNLV, and Teresa
Sullivan and Ronald Mann of UT Law.
Papers accepted for this year’s conference include a study of the elderly
as an expanding group of bankrupt consumers, the use of arbitration in credit
card disputes, two studies of the use of formal lawsuits to collect debts, the
actual roles played by “examiners” under the Bankruptcy Code, two
studies comparing small businesses and consumers in financial distress who file
for bankruptcy and those who do not, a study of the effect of competition on
the strictness or leniency of terms offered in consumer contracts over the Internet,
and an analysis of professional fees in Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases.
Related Links:
About Professor Westbrook: http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/profile.php?id=westbro
About Professor Sullivan: http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/profile.php?id=gstas
Empirical Studies on Bankruptcy by Westbrook and Sullivan: http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/clbe/programs/westbrook