Spring 2025 Workshop

Feb. 10, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 - 6:10 PM

Kobi Kastiel

Faculty of Law
Tel Aviv University

Presentation (in-person only) will be in JGH 646.

Feb. 17, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 – 6:10 PM

Elizabeth Pollman

Professor of Law; Co-Director, Institute for Law & Economics
University of Pennsylvania, Carey Law School

Presentation (in-person only) will be in JGH 646.

March 10, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 – 6:10 PM

Daniel Hemel

Professor of Law
NYU Law School

Presentation (in-person only) will be in JGH 646.

March 24, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 – 6:10 PM

Andrew Verstein

Professor of Law; Faculty Co-Director, Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy
UCLA Law School

Presentation (in-person only) will be in JGH 646.

April 7, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 - 6:10 PM

Natasha Sarin

Professor of Law
Yale Law School

Presentation (in-person only) will be in JGH 646.

Broken Budgeting

As peacetime deficits rose over the course of the last half century, policymakers searched for tools to assess how close—or far off—new budget, tax, and spending proposals would bring them to fiscal sustainability. This search led to the birth of modern scorekeeping, a complex and highly technical exercise undertaken by neutral government analysts known as scorekeepers. Because its origins are tied to rising deficits, scorekeepers are governed by rules that focus their attention on myopic cost/benefit analysis, rather than long-term policy evaluation. Over the years, many have criticized the process and questioned the accuracy of scores in particular arenas.

This Article offers a more provocative and fulsome take. While ostensibly neutral, the primacy of scorekeeping and scorekeepers has created impediments to legislating a progressive vision of government. Progressive policymaking has at its core government interventions that give society the ability to reap benefits down the line—like investments in children, or in combatting climate change—benefits that accrue in the long-term and are difficult to quantify. Presently, scorekeepers register these types of interventions as costs to the fisc rather than profitable investments, and that hinders their adoption. This is not the fault of scorekeepers, who have limited scope to act outside the rules and parameters set out by the members of Congress they serve. But it is a critique of those rules, which through manipulation and misunderstanding create a process that is far from neutral: instead, one that skews policy outcomes against progressive reforms that invest in future generations and in redressing inequality.

In this piece we lay out the ways in which deficit-centrality has shaped the federal budgeting and scorekeeping process, synthesize the deficiencies of this approach, and offer a way forward. Our piece is a call-to-arms, as academics have an important role to play in helping policymakers arrive at a more holistic approach to policy analysis, as opposed to the narrow focus on cost estimates that guides policy discussions today.

April 21, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 - 6:10 PM

Yaron Nili

Professor of Law
Duke University School of Law

Presentation (in-person only) will be in JGH 646.

Opting Out of Court? Extralegal Relations and Informal Norms in Private Equity

Private equity, an industry characterized by high-stakes investments and complex contractual arrangements, operates in a governance paradox. Despite the substantial financial stakes involved—billions of dollars locked into multi-decade funds—and the potential for fiduciary conflicts, litigation between limited partners (LPs) and general partners (GPs) is exceptionally rare. In stark contrast to public markets, where shareholder litigation plays a prominent role in deterring misconduct and shaping corporate norms, the private equity world is largely defined by its absence. The puzzle, then, is this: in an industry where fiduciary breaches or misaligned incentives are not uncommon, why do LPs almost never turn to courts to enforce their rights?

Utilizing proprietary documents, public records and qualitative interviews with market players, this article provides the first account of the rarity of litigation in private equity and the ecosystem of extralegal relations and informal norms that have long been championed as key pillars of the industry distinctiveness. Yet, the article also highlights how opting out of court is not necessarily a win-win outcome but rather the result of reputational concerns, contractual barriers and institutional (dis)incentives rather than the lack of grievances.

This article makes three contributions to the literature on private equity. First, using novel data, the article provides the first empirical account of the non-litigious private equity landscape and the underlining causes that explain it. Second, in the absence of litigation, the article investigates how private equity resolves disputes and enforces norms without recourse to courts. Through a unique set of interviews with LPs, GPs, and legal advisors, this article sheds light on the alternative mechanisms that dominate the private equity landscape. Third, the article explores the implications of this non-litigious environment for investor protection, market efficiency, and regulatory oversight, questioning whether reliance on reputation and extralegal mechanisms is sustainable in the face of growing industry complexity.

April 28, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 – 6:10 PM

Jonathon Zytnick

Associate Professor of Law
Georgetown Law

Presentation (in-person only) will be in JGH 646.