Citizens and Beyond …

The Supreme Court on September 28th granted certiorari yesterday regarding whether to expand corporate rights in other contexts. The cases, will involve the application of the state secrets doctrine and invocation of the right to privacy by a corporation (General Dynamics Corp. v. United States and The Boeing Company v. United States, Nos. 09-1298 & 09-1302). It will be interesting to watch in the coming months how the experts will analyze these cases, especially in light of the Court's recent Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

While I’m sure that I will have strong opinions on the cases as a scholar when they are decided by the Supreme Court, my primary interest in these right now is as a teacher. One of the points of this semester long project that Atiba Ellis and I have is trying to find ways to teach across the curriculum. Only the most superficial logic would deny the overlapping nature between one aspect of a curriculum and another. In fact, on the first day of my business organizations class I challenge my students to find one course that they are taking or have taken where business and business organization issues are not implicated. In the two years that I have made that challenge I have yet to be stumped to find a connection.

Last month, I co-taught a class for andre cummings entertainment law course on piercing the corporate veil. dre certainly didn't need the help – he has taught this course numerous times and has a strong business background. Still, I couldn’t argue with his logic in getting me to co-teach with him: according to dre, it’s creative and offers students a different perspective. I agree with dre. I also think it breathes life into students who, for this generation at least, seem quick to view things as monotonous and repetitive. In my own experiences teaching Legal Writing I also found this to be so – I could give my students my core tips repeatedly over the semester but, as soon as I have a guest lecturer who comes in and, in essence, repeats those same tips to them, suddenly the students get it.

So what does all this have to do with the Supreme Court’s docket? Well, in the coming weeks I will look for ways to incorporate these issues into my business organizations and corporate governance classes. My corporate governance students in particular, who are just beginning to draft their seminar papers, might find it interesting to make connections between a corporation’s 1st amendment rights (as discussed in Citizens) and a corporation’s right to privacy. In my business organizations class we recently discussed the issues of duties for members of the board of directors and the rights of shareholders to bring derivative lawsuits if they feel that the corporations are not invoking invoking their rights. The example I gave my students is a variant on an example that Mark Ramseyer gives when he teaches his students this segment: what if Iron Man, the treasurer for S.H.I.EL.D. corporation, suddenly decided that SHIELD’s iron man suits are his and his alone and steals them from the corporation. If the company refuses to sue (preferring to take matters in their own hands) then a shareholder of S.H.I.E.L.D. would have the right to bring a derivative lawsuit in the corporation’s name suing to get the Iron Man suits back. One of the things that I will ask my students is, would the principles of derivative lawsuits apply in those situations where a shareholder is seeking to invoke a corporation’s right to privacy? What are the implications when the rights that a shareholder is trying to enforce are not monetary or fiduciary but constitutional? SInce we have a guest lecturer who will be talking with my students on Thursday about the Citizens United case, this seems like an ideal setting to pose these questions.

Hopefully, getting them to think about this in one context will encourage them to think about it in other contexts. I would love to hear suggestions from other teachers out there for what they do to teach across curricula…