Research
There is a loose association between the research interests I have and the projects I do volunteer and professional work on (see “Projects” in side bar).
At present, I have four inter-related areas of research interests: corporate law, securities law (or the law of capital markets), social security and in particular pensions, all of which can be subsumed by “law and development.”
Purpose and Function of Business Corporations
I have a conducted the background research for an on-going three-part project of the history of business corporations. The primary justification for this project is to examine the capability of a dominant form of collective today – the transnational business corporation – for its ability to meet public purposes. The three phases correspond roughly to three eras of economic development of the Canadian and Anglo-American economies that coincide with the history of the joint-stock corporation: Industrial capitalism (roughly, 1800-1900), New Deal capitalism (roughly 1900-1970) and Globalization (1970 to present). The third of these three parts, the purpose and function corporations in the era of globalization, forms my PhD thesis.
Patterns of Corporate Finance
The related set of research interests are patterns of capital formation of corporations. A central thesis of a capitalist system is the accumulation of capital: I am interested in how capital is accumulated in corporations — in particular public business corporations — the sources of capital for corporations, and the legal framework for understanding both. The sources and accumulation of capital are important determinants of the political economy of decision-making of the corporation. This inquiry is an intervention into the discourse on possible reforms to corporate governance and decision-making.
This inquiry has implications for the theory of corporations. The use of capital markets — issuing stock or debt — is one of the very core justifications of the corporate form itself. The legal form of corporation is at least partly justified by its ability to aggregate the “savings” of disparate “investors” who otherwise would not be able to know or efficiently choose to allocate their savings to a productive enterprise. Securities markets in general are held out as model forms of functioning, if not near-perfect markets. Capital markets become the focus of much research in law and economics.
Applied research
I have worked as both a corporate lawyer and labour lawyer, most recently with a leading litigation union-side labour firm in Canada. I practice pension and benefits law, investment management and shareholder activism on behalf of unions. As a member of the Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers, I am a delegate and founding member of a new regional labour law Observatory and Network composed of labour law associations and academics in the Americas.
I have acted as advisor and counsel on several projects related to my research, including:
+ written advocacy to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of an indigenous community pursuing a land claim in Montana Verde, Honduras;
+ written advocacy for the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues on the jurisdiction of NAFTA tribunals; and
+ drafting popular legal education materials on reparations and transnational law for Rights Action and Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions.
Part of my work in Central America has been to identify transnational actors and seek ways to hold them accountable for their role in specific human rights abuses and development theory and practice more generally. Work includes:
+ legal advisor to Rights Action, an NGO participating in the Chixoy Dam Reparations Campaign. The campaign is lead by a coalition of NGOs and community groups seeking to hold international financial institutions accountable for their role in funding projects that resulted in genocide and forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of indigenous persons in Guatemala in the 1980s; and
+ identifying transnational corporate and quasi-governmental actors and seeking methods to hold them accountable for wrongful conduct in specific cases and their role in the development model more generally. Current projects include developing on the role of Export Development Canada and export development corporations in financing transnational corporations, and in particular their role in financing the energy and extraction industry projects in less developed countries.