Celebrating 35 years of leadership in corporate law scholarship.

• Author: Thomas, Randall S.
• Position: Iowa

Thirty-five years ago, a small group of University of Iowa College of Law students, working in conjunction with Father David C. Bayne of the school's faculty, had the brilliant idea to form a new type of law journal--a specialty journal in corporate law, which became known as The Journal of Corporation Law (JCL). Father Bayne "felt that there was a need for a journal of national scope and stature that would address issues in the field of corporate law and that the Iowa Law School was under-represented in the number of journals it published." (1) He "believed that the excellence of a law school depends upon the quality of its journals and that Iowa could support more student writers because of student demand for more corporate law opportunity." (2)

Over time, JCL evolved substantially, growing from a little-known specialty publication to the best student journal in the field of corporate law. It was my honor to have been involved with JCL for all of the years that I taught at the University of Iowa College of Law, and it is my pleasure to have the opportunity to work with its staff once again in publishing this foreword to their 35th Anniversary volume.

1. JCL 's Formation

   Father Bayne was a legend at the University of Iowa College of Law well before I arrived in 1990. I met him a few times after his retirement from active teaching, but most of what I know about him and his role in forming JCL I learned from my former Dean, N. William Hines, (3) and some correspondence between the current JCL editors and a former JCL staffer, Robert G. Olson. (4) Drawing from these sources, it appears that in 1974 a group of students--with the strong support of Father Bayne--proposed the idea of creating a new student-edited journal at the Iowa Law School. Father Bayne contributed "substantial time, effort, contacts and money to get [JCL] started." (5) His efforts were matched by those of the founding students, whom Dean Hines remembers were "mature," "active," and "very impressive." (6) The faculty approved the creation of JCL, and these students became JCL's first editorial board. In 1975, JCL published its first issue.

   The next year, Dean Hines assumed the Deanship at the University of Iowa College of Law, a position he held very successfully for the next 28 years. (7) One of the first trials Hines faced was to resolve a dispute between the JCL editorial board and its then faculty sponsor over which one of them would control the editorial decision-making process. The Board "staked its independence" by deciding that they would not be beholden to anyone, (8) and in the end, the editors prevailed.

   An extended period of strong development of JCL followed. Olson, who worked with the first two staffs, remembers that "the founding staffs were dedicated to making this work. They worked...