A call for papers on unincorporated business entities

REMINDER!!

This year as chair of the AALS Section on Agency, Partnerships and Limited Liability Companies I'm on a mission trying to get people interested in this area of the law.  Too often the business associations area is basically corporate law with a little agency and partnership thrown in. But as I've said in many ways and venues, this area is too important both intellectually and for training our students to be marginalized in this way.

Focusing on the theory, I've found a number of important implications from expanding my horizons to include unincorporated firms.  Among other things:  how many business forms should there be?  what are the implications of extending the jurisdictional competition data set from corporations to unincorporated firms?  what can we learn about the nature of mandatory and default rules by looking beyond standard-form corporations? 

In that vein, the Section is doing a call for papers this year that is designed to reach not only the usual agency/partnership crowd but also those doing research in corporate and related areas of law.  I hope this call encourages a wide range of papers in what I think is a rapidly growing area of law and scholarship. 

Anyway, here's our call for papers.  Let me have your proposals.

The AALS Agency, Partnerships and Limited Liability Companies Section is calling for papers for the 2009 AALS Annual Meeting in San Diego. We are interested in presentations on the application of modern theories and empirical methods of business associations to agency and unincorporated firms. The program has two goals: First, to show how these theories can be enriched by taking them outside the "box" of corporate law; and second, to show the relevance of agency and unincorporated firms to the mainstream of corporate theory and empirics. A non-exhaustive list of possible topics includes the nature and function of fiduciary duties, agency theory, the role and enforcement of contracts, jurisdictional competition and choice of form, the relationship of federal and state law, jurisprudence, international and institutional comparisons, and legal and economic history.

Please email either a draft paper if available, or if not an abstract and outline, to Larry E. Ribstein, University of Illinois College of Law, ribstein [at] law.uiuc.edu by no later than September 1, 2008.