Jodie Kirshner, Esq., University Lecturer in Corporate Law and Deputy Director of the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law, will lead the teaching of a module on U.S. corporate law as part of the Masters in Corporate Law programme in 2012-13.
The module will familiarize students with key features of U.S. corporate law. Topics covered will include directors' duties, shareholder voting, minority shareholder protection and stockholder litigation. There will be particular emphasis on mechanisms of corporate accountability and the interplay between state and federal law. According to Kirshner, "It has become crucial for corporate lawyers of all nationalities to gain familiarity with those aspects of U.S. law that are second-nature to American corporate lawyers. Litigation and deal-making are increasingly cross border in orientation, causing American law to arise frequently in both practice and scholarship. This module is designed to immerse students in the key legal concepts familiar to U.S. corporate lawyers."
Kirshner, whose research focuses on cross-border and comparative issues in company and insolvency law, studied at Harvard and Columbia and has held research fellowships at Cambridge, Oxford, London Business School, and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law. Prior to coming to Cambridge, she served as a federal judicial clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and practiced as a litigator at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP in New York. Kirshner is a currently a fellow of the Center for Law, Economics and Finance at the George Washington University Law School and a visiting scholar at Columbia Law School.
More information about the MCL can be found on the MCL website.