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Panel 1: Run for the Hills: Insurance Retreat & Resiliency
Get PDFModerator: Usha Rodrigues, University Professor & Kilpatrick Chair of Corporate Finance & Securities Law
Panelists: Albert Lin, Martin Luther King Jr., Professor of Law, U.C. Davis School of Law Mark Nevitt, Associate Professor, Emory University School of Law Rob Hoyt, Dudley L. Moore, Jr., Chair of Insurance and Professor, UGA Terry College of Business
The panel’s discussion will center around articles regarding insurance retreat authored by Professors Albert Lin and Mark Nevitt. Professor Lin’s scholarship, Public Insurance as a Lever for Semi-Managed Climate Retreat, discusses (a) “the growing reluctance of private insurers to offer policies in climate-vulnerable areas, the accompanying rise of state-backed insurance, and ongoing managed retreat efforts;” (b) the “objectives of public insurance programs;” and (c) “how governments might try to advance these objectives as climate change worsens.” Similarly, Professor Nevitt’s scholarship, Climate Risk, Insurance Retreat, and State Response, contemplates (a) the “causes and effects of insurance retreat;” (b) “how various government insurance programs can and have responded to insurance retreat;” and (c) comparisons between various government insurance programs. Professor Usha Rodrigues will elicit responses from Professors Lin and Nevitt regarding their respective research and proposals, while drawing upon Professor Hoyt’s applied understanding of the insurance industry. The panel will conclude with approximately ten minutes of audience question and answer
Building Climate Resilience with Local Tools
Get PDFThe first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, celebrated the grassroots environmental movement that began in the ‘60s and early ‘70s and ushered in the creation of a new legal framework for controlling pollution and addressing environmental concerns in the United States. However, more than fifty years later, some experts fear that the environmental progress achieved during the ‘70s and ‘80s has begun to stall as the United States and other nations experience broad economic hardship and must shift their focus to more immediate concerns. Therefore, even as the damaging effects of climate change threaten communities across the globe, the next major environmental movement is unlikely to happen at the federal or global level. Instead, state and local citizens and governments must address the increasing impacts of climate change by exploring short- and long-term approaches to land use planning and environmental regulation to prepare communities to be resilient to coming changes. This Article attempts to consolidate the various land use tools, such as planning, zoning, sustainable and green development, eminent domain, inverse condemnation, nuisance law, renewable energy incentives, and smart cities, which can help communities and individuals deal with past, current, and future impacts from climate change. These more localized tools present greater opportunities to prepare for climate change and continuing disasters, address systemic inequalities and disruptive histories, and build or rebuild resilient communities through mitigation and adaptation. This Article suggests that the principle of social ecological resilience is an effective concept to deal with climate change when our ecosystems are prone to disruption, promoting a land use system that manages risk through mitigation and adaptation. By incorporating principles of social-ecological resilience, sustainability, and adaptation into the circle of disaster risk management and other regulatory responses, communities can better prepare for the future while also establishing equitable laws and policies. The Article continues by assessing local land use concepts that are available to mitigate and adapt to climate change at the community level. While local governments have a vital role in establishing mitigation and adaptation strategies through a variety of land use regulations and policymaking, the participation of all citizens who live and work in the community––particularly the vulnerable ones––is also essential for creating planning and governance strategies that further a community’s resilience goals. This inclusive, community-wide approach provides a framework for assessing emergency response strategies at the local level, analyzing various compensation models to spread risks following a disaster, and facilitating cohesive and effective rebuilding efforts. Bearing all these tools in mind, this Article concludes that adaptive governance informed by resilience thinking at the local level will help build (and rebuild) communities capable of withstanding whatever the future holds
Helping the Little Guy: A Comparative Analysis of Shareholder Protection Mechanisms in the United States and Singapore
Get PDFAs American corporate law has developed since the Progressive and New
Deal eras, shareholders have increasingly employed the shareholder proposal
mechanism, provided by SEC Rule 14a-8, as a means to achieve any number
of desired results. Generally, Rule 14a-8 requires companies to include
shareholder proposals on their proxy statements. The desires of shareholders,
outside of their often primary desire to make money, now frequently include
Environmental, Social, and Governance (“ESG”) reform, increasing board
diversity, merger and acquisition-related decisions, and monitoring executive
pay. In particular, shareholders’ focus on ESG reform is no surprise given the
broad worldwide focus on responding to rising environmental concerns.
Indeed, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
an American scientific and regulatory agency, 2021 “culminated as the sixth
warmest year on record for the globe.” Further, “the years 2013-2021 all rank
among the ten warmest years on record.” Investors in both the United States
and Europe have begun responding to these environmental issues. However,
the capabilities American shareholders (particularly minority shareholders)
have to effect positive environmental change at the corporate level is hindered
by the fact that the United States ranks 36th in the world when it comes to
protecting minority investors. A minority investor, or shareholder, is one who
owns less than half of a given company’s total shares—thus making them in
the minority of overall shareholders. While the United States ranks high (6th)
on a general ease of doing business scale, its protection of minority investors,
according to the World Bank, lags. The U.S. has a 71.6 (out of 100) score for
the protection of minority investors. Particularly troublesome among the
World Bank’s analyses of American protection of minority investors is the
nation’s “[e]xtent of shareholder rights index.” This means, generally, that a
minority investor interested in changing a company’s practices in an effort to
improve said company’s environmental impact has less of an ability to do so
in the United States than in 35 other nations.
Why does the United States lag behind other nations with regard to
minority shareholder protection, and how can it change for the better
Gender-Based Violence and Harassment at Sea
Get PDFThis Symposium contribution assesses the ability of international law to evolve to offer essential protections for workers in an increasingly globalized world. It focuses on protections for women seafarers, specifically around gender-based violence and harassment on board vessels. Even though it is the world’s oldest transnational sector, seafaring remains overwhelmingly male-dominated. Consequently, international law was not initially conceived with women seafarers in mind. Now that women have broken into the maritime profession, they count on international law to evolve in kind. Notwithstanding, they continue to face sexist, if not violent, workplaces, and report high incidents of gender-based violence and harassment at sea.
The international organization responsible for adopting and supervising protections for workers, the International Labour Organization (ILO), has long prioritized the special needs of seafarers. Its Maritime Labor Convention, 2006, promised to ensure holistic protections for all women and men at sea and to quickly adapt with evolving sectoral challenges. A close look at the prevalence of gender-based violence and harassment at sea shows, however, that the ILO’s bureaucratic pathologies and interinstitutional processes preclude it from accomplishing that mission. The ILO’s failure to quickly respond to mounting evidence of that violence and harassment has broad implications for international law, which must absorb and respond to transnational work’s dynamic and fluctuating demands to remain useful and relevant
Orford featured in The Current
No full textAssistant Professor Adam D. Orford was featured in The Current regarding the U.S. Supreme Court\u27s Chevron deference doctrine decision. The article titled Sapelo Residents Petition for Special Election was written by Mary Landers and published 7/10/24
LeClercq presents at Trade and Public Policy Network Conference
No full textAssistant Professor Desirée LeClercq presented Enforcement of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement Rapid Response Mechanism at the 2nd Annual Trade and Public Policy Network Conference in Oxford, England
Kadri featured in The Baffler magazine
No full textAssistant Professor Thomas E. Kadri was featured in The Baffler magazine regarding internet access regulation. The article titled Crimes of the Future was written by T.M. Brown and published 8/16/24
LeClercq presents at World Trade Organization
No full textAssistant Professor Desirée LeClercq presented her research on the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement at the 2024 World Trade Organization Public Forum in Geneva, Switzerland
Rodrigues featured in Fortune
No full textAssociate Dean, University Professor & Kilpatrick Chair of Corporate Finance and Securities Law Usha Rodrigues was featured in Fortune regarding special purpose acquisition companies and meme stocks. The article titled Trump Media lockup deadline leaves Trump with a choice: trigger a fire sale or hold a meme stock was written by Paolo Confino and published 9/18/24. The article was republished by other media outlets
Ringhand presents at University of Wisconsin Law School
No full textHosch Professor & Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor Lori A. Ringhand presented “Rescuing Reynolds” at the Wisconsin Discussion Group on Constitutionalism at the University of Wisconsin Law School in September