Monday, November 24th, 2025
12:45 – 2:00pm
Boston University School of Law
765 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215
Barristers Hall, First Floor
Please join us on Monday, November 24th, for the Inaugural Tamar Frankel Lecture featuring Ann Lipton, Laurence W. DeMuth Chair and Professor of Law at the University of Colorado. Professor Lipton will discuss “Corporate Governance Authoritarianism.”
A corporation is often described as “owned” by its shareholders, but views of shareholders’ appropriate role in corporate governance have shifted over time. For many years, there was little expectation that dispersed and passive retail investors would involve themselves with corporate policy at all, which functionally meant that corporate boards could operate relatively free of constraint. Over the past few decades, however, the shareholder base has transformed. Individual shareholders were replaced by a sophisticated and powerful asset management industry capable of exerting tremendous influence over corporate managers. Regulators opened new legal pathways for shareholders to make their voices heard and imposed new expectations that investors act as stewards over their portfolio companies.
Today, that tide may be shifting. Between proposed regulatory changes at the federal level that would limit shareholder oversight, to new state laws that shield corporate insiders and controlling stockholders from investor influence, we may be experiencing a renaissance of the all-powerful corporate moguls who dictate how the vast resources of the corporation are deployed, with little accountability to investors or the public.
This lecture will discuss how shareholder power has waxed and waned over time and the implications for corporate law and economic ordering more generally.
About the Speaker
After graduating law school in 2000, Lipton clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter and 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Edward Becker. She then practiced in New York City for over 10 years, where she specialized in plaintiff-side securities and corporate litigation at the trial and appellate levels. She also worked briefly for the Securities and Exchange Commission. As a scholar, Lipton explores corporate governance, the relationships between corporations and investors, and the role of corporations in society. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Corporation Law, the Fordham Law Review, and the Georgetown Law Journal, among other publications. Beginning with the Ninth Edition, she became one of the authors of the Securities Regulation: Cases and Materials casebook published by Aspen Publishers. She also blogs regularly for the Business Law Prof Blog.
This Annual Lecture is made possible through the great generosity of BU Law Alumnus and Boston University Trustee Nate Dalton. Each year, the lecture will bring to BU Law a leading scholar whose work engages with the enduring themes at the heart of Tamar Frankel’s scholarship: fiduciary duty, corporate responsibility, and the restoration of trust and integrity in business and law, with the goal of promoting ethical leadership, accountability, and the public good.
Boston University strives to be accessible, inclusive and diverse in our facilities, programming and academic offerings. Your experience in this event is important to us. If you have a disability (including but not limited to learning or attention, mental health, concussion, vision, mobility, hearing, physical or other health related), require communication access services for the deaf or hard of hearing, or believe that you require a reasonable accommodation for another reason please contact Elizabeth Clancey (lawevent@bu.edu) by March 25th, to discuss your needs.
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