Center Events
Past Lectures
April 5, 2023
"ESG Disclosure and Securities Regulation " by Professor Julia D. Mahoney, University of Virginia School of Law
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Professor Mahoney is the John S. Battle Professor of Law and the Joseph C. Carter, Jr., Research 
Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. She teaches courses in property, government finance, constitutional law and nonprofit organizations. A graduate of Yale Law School, she joined the University of Virginia faculty as an associate professor in 1999. She has also taught at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, and before entering the legal academy, practiced law at the New York firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Her scholarly articles include works on land preservation, eminent domain, health care reform and property rights in human biological materials. Read more.
February, 10 2021
"The Life and Contributions of F.A. Hayek" by Professor Bruce Caldwell, Duke University
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Read the story.
He is the author of several books and over two hundred articles and essays on a variety of topics, including Economic History and the Methodology of Economic Science. He is the world’s leading authority on the life and ideas of Hayek (1899-1992), who shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economic Science. He is the author of “Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek” and has served as the general editor of the book series “The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek” since 2002. Caldwell is currently working on a family authorized biography of Hayek. Read more.
November 17, 2020
"Racial Capitalism and College Sports" by Professor Jamel K. Donnor, School of Education, William & Mary
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Professor Donnor is a socio-legal scholar with faculty affiliations in Arts & Sciences and William & Mary Law School. His areas of expertise include education policy and law, race and the law, affirmative action and higher education, intercollegiate athletics, and school de/segregation. Professor Donnor is one of the country’s leading experts on critical race theory, school segregation, and education inequality and race. His work draws on political theory, legal history, and case law to examine questions on the relationship between law and racial inequality, and to interpret how the U.S. Supreme Court interacts with conservative ideology and right-wing movements in interpreting the Constitution. Read more.
October 29, 2020
"Markets and 19th Century Patent Medicines" by Professor Peter T. Leeson, George Mason University
Professor Leeson is author of the award-winning "The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates" and "WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird." Big Think listed him among "Eight of the World's Top Young Economists." He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Formerly, Professor Leeson was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, a Visiting Fellow in Political Economy and Government at Harvard University, and the F.A. Hayek Fellow at the London School of Economics.
November 8, 2019
"The New Stock Market: Law, Economics, and Policy," a lecture by Professor Merrit B. Fox, Columbia Law School, based on his book.
Professor Fox's research interests include law and economics, securities disclosure regulation, international securities regulation, and comparative corporate law. Fox’s books include The New Stock Market: Law, Economics, and Policy (Columbia, 2019), Corporate Governance Lessons From Transition Economy Reforms (Princeton, 2006), and Finance and Industrial Performance in a Dynamic Economy (Columbia, 1987). As one of the directors of the Program in Law and Economics of Capital Markets, Fox leads the New Special Study designed to guide policymaking for capital markets. Read more.
October 20, 2019
Lecture by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce
Listen to the podcast (Leadership & Business, hosted by the Mason School of Business at William & Mary).
Ms. Peirce was appointed by President Donald Trump to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and was sworn in on January 11, 2018. Prior to joining the Commission, Commissioner Peirce served as Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Financial Markets Working Group (now Program on Financial Regulation) at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. While at the Mercatus Center, Commissioner Peirce’s research explored how financial markets foster economic growth and prosperity and the role well-designed regulation plays in protecting investors and consumers while promoting financial stability and innovation. Commissioner Peirce co-edited two books, authored publications, testified before Congress, and served on the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee. Read more.
February 21, 2019
"Markets and the Evolution of Property Law," a lecture by Professor Molly Brady, University of Virginia School of Law
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Professor Molly Brady's primary teaching and research interests are in property law, land use law, local government law, legal history and intellectual property law. Her scholarship undertakes historical analyses of legal rules and land use policies, using these analyses to account for developments in eminent domain law, to illuminate connections between property and other doctrinal areas, and to explore how different institutions respond to problems in city planning and governance. Read more.
January 30, 2019
"Assessing California's Gender Diversity Mandate for Corporate Boards," a lecture by Professor Kimberly D. Krawiec, Duke University Law School
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Kimberly D. Krawiec is an expert on corporate law who teaches courses on securities, corporate, and derivatives law. Her research interests span a variety of fields, including the empirical analysis of contract disputes; the choice of organizational form by professional service firms, including law firms; forbidden or taboo markets; corporate compliance systems; insider trading; derivatives hedging practices; and “rogue” trading. Learn more.
November 5, 2018
Guest lecture by SEC Commissioner Robert J. Jackson, Jr.
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Robert J. Jackson, Jr., was nominated to the Securities and Exchange Commission by President Trump on Sept. 1, 2017, and sworn in by the Senate on Jan. 11, 2018. Prior to his appointment to the SEC, Jackson was also a Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He also previously practiced law at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and served as a senior policy advisor for the U.S. Department of Treasury following the financial crisis of 2007-08. Jackson received his B.A., B.S., and M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Public Policy and J.D. from Harvard University.
April 2, 2018
"Markets and Morality," a lecture by Professor Julia D. Mahoney, University of Virginia School of Law
Julia D. Mahoney joined the University of Virginia faculty as an associate professor in 1999 and is now John S. Battle Professor of Law. She has also taught at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, and, before entering the legal academy, practiced law at the New York firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Her scholarly articles include works on land preservation, eminent domain, health care reform and property rights in human biological materials. Learn more.
March 19, 2018
"Current Issues in Securities Regulation," a lecture by SEC Commissioner Michael S. Piwowar
Michael S. Piwowar was first appointed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by President Barack Obama and was sworn in on August 15, 2013. Dr. Piwowar was designated Acting Chairman of the Commission by President Donald Trump from January 23, 2017, to May 4, 2017. Previously, Dr. Piwowar was the Republican chief economist for the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs under Senators Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Richard Shelby (R-AL). He was the lead Republican economist on the four SEC-related titles of the Dodd-Frank Act and the JOBS Act. Learn more.
February 21, 2018
"Federal Environmental Regulation Reconsidered," a lecture by Professor Jonathan 
H. Adler, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Jonathan H. Adler is the inaugural Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Business Law & Regulation at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, where he teaches courses in environmental, administrative and constitutional law. Professor Adler is the author or editor of seven books, including Business and the Roberts Court (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform (AEI Press, 2011), and over a dozen book chapters. Learn more.
November 13, 2017
“The Constitutional Law of Economic Liberty, as Told Exclusively through Cows,” a 
lecture by Sheldon Gilbert, Institute for Justice
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Sheldon Gilbert is the director of the Institute for Justice’s Center for Judicial Engagement (CJE), which he joined in 2017. As CJE’s director, he educates the public about the proper role of judges in enforcing constitutional limits on the size and scope of government. Before joining the Institute for Justice, Mr. Gilbert worked as a litigator for the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, where he represented the Chamber in over 400 cases in federal and state courts addressing a host of important business law issues—from property rights to free speech—including nearly a hundred cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Learn more.
April 17, 2017
“Should We Subject Religion to Market Forces? Examining the Economics of Judaism,” a lecture by Professor Barack D. Richman, Duke University Law School
Professor Richman’s primary research interests include the economics of contracting, new institutional economics, antitrust, and healthcare policy. His work has been published in the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Law and Social Inquiry, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Affairs. His book Stateless Commerce was published by Harvard University Press in 2017. Learn more.
March 31, 2017
"How the Other Half Banks: Poverty and Banking," a lecture by Professor Mehrsa Baradaran, University of Georgia Law School
Professor Baradaran's scholarship includes the books How the Other Half Banks with the Harvard University Press and The Color of Money: An History of Black Banking (forthcoming, Harvard University Press). She and her book How the Other Half Banks have received significant national and international media coverage and has been featured in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Slate, American Banker, Financial Times, National Public Radio’s “Marketplace,” C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” Public Broadcasting Service’s “NewsHour” and as part of TEDxUGA. Learn more.
November 1, 2016
"Law and Taboo Markets," a lecture by Professor Kimberly D. Krawiec, Duke University Law School
Professor Krawiec is an expert on corporate law who teaches courses on securities, corporate, and derivatives law. Her research interests span a variety of fields, including the empirical analysis of contract disputes; the choice of organizational form by professional service firms, including law firms; forbidden or taboo markets; corporate compliance systems; insider trading; derivatives hedging practices; and “rogue” trading. Learn more.
Past Conferences
May 2 & 3, 2019
Democracy, Religion and the Marketplace, co-sponsored by the University of Virginia and the Center for the Study of Law and Markets (held at the University of Virginia)
February 23 & 24, 2018
Antitrust and the Constitutional Order, presented by the William & Mary Law Review; co-sponsored by the Institute of Bill of Rights Law and the Center for the Study of Law and Markets
The papers appear in Volume 60, Issue Four (2019) of the William & Mary Law Review.
Listen to the podcasts:
Opening Remarks and Panel 1: Antitrust and the First Amendment
Panel 2: Economic Liberty: Competition and the Constitution
Panel 3: Federalism Concerns in Antitrust Jurisprudence
Panel 4: Institutional Design of Antitrust Enforcement
April 7, 2017
Morality, Markets and Contract Law, the inaugural conference hosted by the Center for the Study of Law and Markets
The papers appear in Volume 9, Issue Two (2018) of the William & Mary Business Law Review.
The Center’s inaugural event brought together leading contract law theorists for a discussion using as its starting point themes from the recently published book THE DIGNITY OF COMMERCE: MARKETS AND THE MORAL FOUNDATIONS OF CONTRACT LAW (University of Chicago Press 2017) by Professor Nathan B. Oman.