Virtual Symposium on Contracts and Covid: Introducing Stephen Wilks

Today, our virtual symposium continues with a guest post from my friend and former colleague Stephen Wilks.

Stephen Wilks is Associate Professor of Law at the Detroit Mercy School of Law, where he teaches courses related to his areas of expertise: contracts, sales, business associations, secured transactions, payment systems and comparative commercial law.   His cross-disciplinary research interests explore themes of governance and regulation within transactional spaces. He has examined government use of private payment networks to facilitate various forms of financial surveillance; the role of transnational networks in harmonizing critical segments of the world’s financial system; and the politicization of migrant remittance flows between developed and developing economies. Future projects will focus on digital currency adoption and the legal anthropology of money.  

Stephen holds a B.A. in history and a J.D. from Queen’s University; an M.S.W. from the University of Toronto; and an LL.M. and Ph.D. from York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School. His student-edited and peer-reviewed writings have appeared in the Supreme Court of Canada Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Racial and Ethnic Justice, the Cornell International Law Journal, and other publications.  

It is a special pleasure for me to have the opportunity to work with Stephen again.  Stephen and I taught together for two years at the Valparaiso University School of Law.  I remember well sitting in his office as he skillfully bubble wrapped his wall hangings.  He was off for a two-year visiting stint at Case Western, while I stayed behind, going down with the ship.  I was happy for him, but it was one of many very sad partings.  It is fantastic that we both have landed safely and that we can continue to collaborate from different law schools.  Stephen brings a sophisticated methodological apparatus to the intellectual space at which international banking and finance law meet intersectionality analysis.  I always learn tremendous amounts from the small percentage of his work that I can grasp.