Special Report: Legal Scholarship in Business Schools

• Published date: 01 March 2016
• Date: 01 March 2016
• Author: Robert C. Bird
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ablj.12071

Special Report: Legal Scholarship

in Business Schools

Robert C. Bird*

INTRODUCTION

When Joseph Wharton funded the first collegiate school of business in

1881, he specified business law to be part of the curriculum.

1

Since Whar-

ton’s founding, and also earlier,

2

business law

3

remains an essential part of

*Associate Professor of Business Law and Eversource Energy Chair in Business Ethics,

University of Connecticut. Former Editor in Chief, American Business Law Journal, Volume

50. I appreciate feedback and support from Gerlinde Berger-Walliser, Caroline Kaeb, Ste-

phen Park, Laurie Lucas, Robert Sprague, and Leigh Anenson. Thanks to George Siedel,

who graciously allowed me to reproduce his 2000 white paper with Tom Dunfee in an

appendix of this article. The hard work of Andrew Ouellet, graduate assistant, is greatly

appreciated. Special thanks go to faculty at institutions who provided journal list data for

this study. All errors and omissions are my own.

1

George J. Siedel III et al., An Executive Appraisal of the Importance of Business Law,22AM.

BUS. L.J. 249, 263 (1984).

2

For example, seventeenth-century merchant and economist Gerard Malynes called for

commercial law as necessary for a complete merchant’s education. Nathan Isaacs, The Mer-

chant and His Law,23J.P

OL.ECON. 529, 553 n.1 (1915).

3

The term “business law” tends to vary in the context of scholarship between law school

professors and law professors teaching in business schools. Law faculty teaching in busi-

ness schools typically use the term broadly to mean diverse topics that are relevant to the

legal environment of business such as employment law, tort law, contract law, securities

law, ethics, and international law. See, e.g., Am. Bus. Law Journal,Author Guidelines, WILEY

ONLINE LIBRARY, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291744-1714/

homepage/ForAuthors.html (last visited Oct. 6, 2015) (welcoming “manuscripts that com-

prehensively explore and analyze legal and ethical issues that affect businesses, not only

within the United States but also across the globe”). Law professors and law journals, by

contrast, often use the term narrowly to involve law directly related to the corporation,

business formation, or financial transactions. E.g., About HBLR,H

ARVARD BUSINESS LAW

REVIEW, http://www.hblr.org/about/ (last visited Oct. 6, 2015) (“The Harvard Business Law

Review and Harvard Business Law Review Online together aim to be the premier sources for

V

C2016 The Author

American Business Law Journal V

C2016 Academy of Legal Studies in Business

9

American Business Law Journal

Volume 53, Issue 1, 9–31, Spring 2016

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business education. As leading author Nathan Isaacs stated a century ago,

“[a]fter all, the justification of commercial law in a college of commerce is

this: that in the vast network of considerations that hem in a practical deci-

sion in business life, some of the most important threads are legal.”

4

Those important threads are no less significant today. Scholarship

from business school faculty, including legal research, has an influential

role in advancing a civilized society. Business law and business ethics are

both on a continuum of social policy. That social policy, embedded in a

social contract that sets the rights, values, and responsibilities of society,

is a foundation of human civilization. Without business law, business

could scarcely function. Legal scholarship from scholars in business

schools promotes human knowledge, improves the understanding of

business organizations and transactions, and advances the legal and ethi-

cal environment in which business functions.

Business school administrators evaluate the quality of scholarship

published in journals for purposes of promotion, tenure, and related

metrics. This article gathers data on legal scholarship and publishing to

help understand how such scholarship is most effectively measured.

Part I of this article examines the publishing practices of law journals

and business journals.

5

Using hand-coded data from select marketing,

accounting, finance, and business law journals, this part compares the

authorship and publication practices of these disciplines. In addition,

Part I also reports anonymized results of a study of the journal list

standards at approximately fifty business schools and briefly discusses

articles concerning laws governing business organization and capital markets.”); Robert M.

Lawless, Nevada’s Position in the Market for Corporate Charters,10N

EV.LAW., no. 8, 2002, at

15, 15 (defining business law as the “law of partnerships, limited liability companies, cor-

porations, and other business forms”). Unless otherwise stated, this article will rely upon

the former, broader definition primarily used in the business school context and among

law faculty teaching in business schools.

4

Isaacs, supra note 2, at 561. Among other areas, Isaacs was an influential contracts scholar

and a major figure in the legal realist movement. His work predated Karl Llewellyn and

may have provided some of the inspiration for the development of the Uniform Commer-

cial Code. See generally Larry A. DiMatteo & Samuel Flaks, Beyond Rules,47H

OUS.L.REV.

297 (2010).

5

This article focuses primarily on U.S. business law scholarship, and care should be taken

toward the results before inferring global applicability.

10 Vol. 53 / American Business Law Journal