This week we kick off a virtual symposium on the contracts scholarship of Mel Eisenberg (left). For readers unfamiliar with Professor Eisenberg’s work, we recommend his 2018 Foundational Principles of Contract Law as a great way to learn contracts law from one of the generational giants in the field. The book is comprehensive, and at 900 pages, it may not be the sort of thing you want to read cover-to-cover, but it is a great thing to have on your shelf and to pull off as you are preparing to teach your contracts class and are looking for a new perspective on familiar material.
The symposium will feature guest posts by some of Professor Eisenberg’s students and colleagues. Some of the posts will discuss specific chapters of Foundational Principles, others will provide thoughts on other aspects of Professor Eisenberg’s writings on contract law, and some will also include personal reflections on what it is like to work and interact with Professor Eisenberg as a colleague, mentor, and scholar.
This week will feature guest posts from the following scholars:
Shawn Bayern is the Larry and Joyce Beltz Professor of Torts and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Florida State University College of Law. Professor Bayern’s research focuses on common-law issues, primarily in contracts, torts and organizational law. He has recently written articles criticizing formalism and economic simplifications of the law. He teaches Torts, Contracts, Agency & Partnership and other related courses. In addition to his numerous law review articles, Professor Bayern has published three books (one co-authored with Mel Eisenberg) and has three more forthcoming!
Douglas Baird is the Harry A. Bigelow Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and Chair, National Bankruptcy Conference. Baird received his undergraduate degree from Yale University summa cum laude and his J.D. from Stanford. He joined Chicago’s faculty in 1980 and served as its Dean from 1994 to 1999. He is the editor of the eleventh edition of the Dawson & Harvey contracts casebook and the author of Reconstructing Contracts (Harvard University Press 2013). We have previously highlighted Professor Baird’s outstanding contracts scholarship on the blog here.
Ethan Leib is the John D. Calamari Distinguished Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. He teaches in contracts, legislation, and regulation. His most recent book, Friend v. Friend: Friendships and What, If Anything, the Law Should Do About Them, explores the costs and benefits of the legal recognition of and sensitivity to friendship; it was published by Oxford University Press. Leib’s scholarly articles have recently appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Virginia Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, California Law Review, and elsewhere. He has also written for a broader audience in the New York Times, USA Today, Policy Review, Washington Post, New York Law Journal, The American Scholar, and The New Republic.
Nancy Kim is the inaugural Michael Paul Galvin Chair in Entrepreneurship and Applied Legal Technology at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. Professor Kim’s scholarship focuses on consent, contracts, privacy, and the effect of technology on society, and she has written dozens of scholarly articles and essays on these subjects. She is also the author of the books, Consentability: Consent and Its Limits (Cambridge University Press, 2019)The Fundamentals of Contract Law and Clauses (Edward Elgar, 2016)Wrap Contracts: Foundations and Ramifications (Oxford University Press, 2013). Professor Kim’s scholarship has been cited by federal courts and in legal treatises, and she is a frequently quoted in the media, including the New York Times, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, and Popular Mechanics.
Professor Kim received her J.D. degree from the UC Berkeley School of Law where she was an associate editor of the California Law Review, and her LL.M. degree from the UCLA School of Law where she was a Ford Foundation Fellow. Kim was also a Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Rhetoric and a minor in French. She is the author of two novels.
We look forward to an exciting week of contributions from our guest bloggers!
Related posts from the Mel Eisenberg Symposium:
Posts from the second week:
