Professor Emeritus, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University
In memoriam
Dr. John Baker is Professor Emeritus of Law, and previously the Dale E. Bennett Professor of Law, at Louisiana State University Law School. He is currently Visiting Professor at Peking University School of Transnational Law (via Zoom) and has been Visiting Professor at The Center for the Constitution, Georgetown Law School (2013-2020). He has also been a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, the University of Oxford (2012-2014) and taught at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford in 2014. Dr. Baker has also been an adjunct Fellow at the Heritage Foundation (Spring, 2008) and a Distinguished Scholar at the Catholic University of America Law School (2011-12). He has taught at Tulane Law School, George Mason Law School, Pepperdine Law School, New York Law School, Hong Kong University, and the University of Dallas, School of Management and also taught and/or lectured in 17 foreign countries. Notable among his foreign visits are the
following: Visiting Professor at the University of Lyon III (France) (1999-2011); Visiting Professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile (2012), as a Fulbright Specialist (2006); and a Fulbright Scholar at various universities in the Philippines. Dr. Baker received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Michigan Law School and his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Dallas. He also earned a Ph.D. in Political Thought from the University of London. Baker has taught over a dozen different subjects, mostly courses in public law. His main areas of interest are Constitutional Law (particularly federalism and separation of powers), Criminal Law, Anti-Terrorism Law, International Law, Health Care Law, Mediation, and Comparative Law.
In addition to law review articles and book chapters, Dr. Baker’s academic publications include Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (with Benson, Force and George; 5th ed. Michie, 1993); An Introduction to the Law of the United States (ed. with Levasseur; University Press of America, 1992). He has also published on Forbes.com, FoxNews.com, in The Washington Times, and a number of times in The Wall Street Journal. He argues in federal court, including two oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court. For many years, he co-taught courses for the Federalist Society on separation of powers with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In September 2016, he co-taught a Supreme Court seminar in China with Justice Samuel Alito. Following law school, he served as a law clerk in federal district court and as an assistant district attorney in New Orleans before joining LSU in 1975. While a professor, he has been as a consultant to USAID, USIA (since rolled into the State Department), the Justice Department, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, and the Office of Planning in the White House. He served on an ABA Task Force which issued the report, The Federalization of Crime (1998) and later as a consultant to the “Bi-Partisan Task Force on the Over- federalization of Crime” (2012-2014) created by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Dr. Baker was a co-founder of the first iteration (1995) of Stratfor Inc., a global intelligence agency. He co-authored its first book: The Intelligence Edge (with Friedman, Friedman and Chapman; Crown Books/Random House 1997). In 2022, he began a short, weekly video podcast available on YouTube and Rumble, The Baker Brief.
Professor of Law and Public Finance, NSU Florida Shepard Broad College of Law
Tim Canova is a Professor of Law and Public Finance at the NSU Shepard Broad College of Law, with broad experience in law teaching, private practice, and public policy. He teaches Constitutional Law II: First Amendment Law, Corporations, Business Entities, Regulation of Financial Institutions, and a Seminar on Law, Finance, and Markets at Nova. He previously taught at the Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law in Orange, California, where he served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the inaugural Betty Hutton Williams Professor of International Economic Law. He was first granted tenure at the University of New Mexico School of Law and he has taught as a visitor at the University of Arizona and the University of Miami.
Canova's work crosses the disciplines of law, public finance, history, and economics. He has been a leading critic of private central banks, including the Federal Reserve. His work has been published in more than two dozen book chapters and articles in the U.S. and overseas, including in the Oxford University Press, Edward Elgar Publishing, Harvard Law & Policy Review, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Brooklyn Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and UC Davis Law Review. Canova was an early critic of financial deregulation and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. In the 1980s, he wrote critically of the federal bailout of Continental Illinois, the nation’s seventh largest commercial bank, and the collapse of the savings & loan industry. In the 1990s, prior to the Asian currency contagion, he argued against the International Monetary Fund’s capital account liberalization program. Throughout the Bush administration, he warned of an impending crisis in the bubble economy. Following the 2008 financial collapse, he lectured and published widely on the causes and consequences of the economic and financial crisis. In 2011, Canova was appointed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to serve on an Advisory Committee on Federal Reserve Reform with leading economists, including Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Reich, James Galbraith, and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Canova also writes and advocates in the areas of campaign finance and election reform, a research agenda informed by his 2016 campaign challenging the then chair of the Democratic National Committee for her U.S. House of Representatives seat in a hotly contested election. Canova’s campaign went viral, raising $3.8 million from 209,000 individual donations and setting a record at the time for the highest percentage (76%) of small online donations for any campaign for federal office. The election results were marred by evidence of statistical anomalies, allegations of electronic voting irregularities, and an order by Florida’s 17th Judicial Circuit Court finding that the Broward County Elections Supervisor had illegally destroyed every ballot cast. In 2019, Canova testified to the Florida Advisory Committee of the United States Civil Rights Commission about the systematic electronic disenfranchisement of voters in Florida elections.
Canova received his A.B. degree from Franklin and Marshall College and his J.D. degree, cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. He has a master’s diploma in graduate legal studies from the University of Stockholm where he was a Swedish Institute Visiting Scholar. He previously served as a legislative assistant to the late U.S. Senator Paul E. Tsongas and practiced law in New York City with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon.
Featured Article entitled “Central Bank Independence as Agency Capture: A Review of the Empirical Literature, Banking & Financial Services Policy Report 30:11 (Nov. 2011).
Professor of Law and Public Finance, NSU Florida Shepard Broad College of Law
Tim Canova is a Professor of Law and Public Finance at the NSU Shepard Broad College of Law, with broad experience in law teaching, private practice, and public policy. He teaches Constitutional Law II: First Amendment Law, Corporations, Business Entities, Regulation of Financial Institutions, and a Seminar on Law, Finance, and Markets at Nova. He previously taught at the Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law in Orange, California, where he served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the inaugural Betty Hutton Williams Professor of International Economic Law. He was first granted tenure at the University of New Mexico School of Law and he has taught as a visitor at the University of Arizona and the University of Miami.
Canova's work crosses the disciplines of law, public finance, history, and economics. He has been a leading critic of private central banks, including the Federal Reserve. His work has been published in more than two dozen book chapters and articles in the U.S. and overseas, including in the Oxford University Press, Edward Elgar Publishing, Harvard Law & Policy Review, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Brooklyn Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and UC Davis Law Review. Canova was an early critic of financial deregulation and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. In the 1980s, he wrote critically of the federal bailout of Continental Illinois, the nation’s seventh largest commercial bank, and the collapse of the savings & loan industry. In the 1990s, prior to the Asian currency contagion, he argued against the International Monetary Fund’s capital account liberalization program. Throughout the Bush administration, he warned of an impending crisis in the bubble economy. Following the 2008 financial collapse, he lectured and published widely on the causes and consequences of the economic and financial crisis. In 2011, Canova was appointed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to serve on an Advisory Committee on Federal Reserve Reform with leading economists, including Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Reich, James Galbraith, and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Canova also writes and advocates in the areas of campaign finance and election reform, a research agenda informed by his 2016 campaign challenging the then chair of the Democratic National Committee for her U.S. House of Representatives seat in a hotly contested election. Canova’s campaign went viral, raising $3.8 million from 209,000 individual donations and setting a record at the time for the highest percentage (76%) of small online donations for any campaign for federal office. The election results were marred by evidence of statistical anomalies, allegations of electronic voting irregularities, and an order by Florida’s 17th Judicial Circuit Court finding that the Broward County Elections Supervisor had illegally destroyed every ballot cast. In 2019, Canova testified to the Florida Advisory Committee of the United States Civil Rights Commission about the systematic electronic disenfranchisement of voters in Florida elections.
Canova received his A.B. degree from Franklin and Marshall College and his J.D. degree, cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. He has a master’s diploma in graduate legal studies from the University of Stockholm where he was a Swedish Institute Visiting Scholar. He previously served as a legislative assistant to the late U.S. Senator Paul E. Tsongas and practiced law in New York City with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon.
Featured Article entitled “Central Bank Independence as Agency Capture: A Review of the Empirical Literature, Banking & Financial Services Policy Report 30:11 (Nov. 2011).
Mercatus Center, George Mason University
Former Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law, University of Illinois College of Law
The University of Illinois College of Law community mourns the loss of Professor Larry E. Ribstein, the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair, Associate Dean for Research, and Co-Director of the Illinois Business Law and Policy Program, who passed away on December 24, 2011 in Fairfax, Virginia.
A member of the Illinois law faculty since 2002, Ribstein was a prodigious and pioneering scholar across a vast range of subjects, including partnerships and limited liability companies, corporate and securities law, choice of law, financial regulation, white-collar crime, legal ethics, and the legal profession. Among his over 170 publications, he was the author of The Rise of the Uncorporation (Oxford University Press, 2010),The Law Market (Oxford University Press, 2009) (with Erin A. O’Hara), The Sarbanes-Oxley Debate (American Enterprise Institute Press, 2006) (with Henry N. Butler), The Constitution and the Corporation (American Enterprise Institute Press, 1995) (with Butler), leading treatises (including Ribstein & Keatinge on Limited Liability Corporations and Bromberg & Ribstein on Partnerships), and two casebooks (Business Associations (4th ed. 2003, Lexis/Nexis) (with Peter V. Letsou) andUnincorporated Business Entities (4th ed. 2009, Lexis/Nexis) (with Jeffrey M. Lipshaw)). His latest book, The Rise of the Uncorporation, which examines the emergence and significance of non-corporate forms of business organization, was recently described in the Michigan Law Review as a “fascinating” study that “takes the traditional law and economics story of the corporation and turns it on its head.” A prominent commentator on law and business, Ribstein was the founder of Ideoblog (www.ideoblog.org) and the leading contributor to Truth on the Market (www.truthonthemarket.com), which was recently ranked by the ABA Journal as one of the 100 top law blogs.
Professor Ribstein taught a variety of courses at the College of Law, including business organizations, unincorporated business entities, and market regulation. He also taught an innovative colloquium on corporate law that brought together students and leading scholars to discuss current issues in the field.
“Larry was a scholar of incandescent intellect, breathtaking range, and unflagging energy,” said Dean Bruce Smith. “He cared passionately about his students and about transforming legal education to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. He invested selflessly in the professional development of junior faculty members – whether at Illinois or at other institutions. He cared deeply about the College of Law and contributed incalculably to it through his ideas, his engagement, and his counsel. And he cherished his family with a love that was boundless. Larry was a towering figure and an incomparable person, and he will be dearly missed.”
After earning his B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, Ribstein practiced for three years as an associate at McDermott, Will & Emery in Chicago. He began his teaching career at Mercer University Law School (1975-87), later serving on the faculty at George Mason University School of Law (1987-2002), including as George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law (1993-2002). He also held visiting professorships at New York University Law School, the University of Texas School of Law, Washington University School of Law, and St. Louis University School of Law. He served the legal-academic community in a variety of capacities, including on the Executive Committee of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Section on Securities Regulation, as chair of the AALS Section on Agency, Partnership and LLCs, and as editor and co-editor of The Supreme Court Economic Review.
Wayne A. Abernathy, Wild Bells
Wayne A. Abernathy is a former U.S. Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions under President George W. Bush, receiving the Alexander Hamilton Award in recognition of his service. In that office he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. Prior to his work at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy served as Staff Director of the Senate Banking Committee, under Chairman Phil Gramm.
Following his service at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy worked for 15 years on the staff of the American Bankers Association, as Executive Vice President for Financial Institutions Policy and Regulatory Affairs.
Previous experience with the Senate Banking Committee includes serving as Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Securities during 1995-1998. From 1989 until 1994, Mr. Abernathy was a Republican economist for the committee. He previously worked as a senior legislative assistant for Senator Gramm during 1987-1989 and as an economist for the Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policy during 1981-1986, under Chairman Jake Garn.
Mr. Abernathy earned his bachelor’s degree in International Studies from The Johns Hopkins University in 1978. In 1980, he received a master’s degree in International Studies from the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University.
Professor of Law and Public Finance, NSU Florida Shepard Broad College of Law
Tim Canova is a Professor of Law and Public Finance at the NSU Shepard Broad College of Law, with broad experience in law teaching, private practice, and public policy. He teaches Constitutional Law II: First Amendment Law, Corporations, Business Entities, Regulation of Financial Institutions, and a Seminar on Law, Finance, and Markets at Nova. He previously taught at the Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law in Orange, California, where he served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the inaugural Betty Hutton Williams Professor of International Economic Law. He was first granted tenure at the University of New Mexico School of Law and he has taught as a visitor at the University of Arizona and the University of Miami.
Canova's work crosses the disciplines of law, public finance, history, and economics. He has been a leading critic of private central banks, including the Federal Reserve. His work has been published in more than two dozen book chapters and articles in the U.S. and overseas, including in the Oxford University Press, Edward Elgar Publishing, Harvard Law & Policy Review, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Brooklyn Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and UC Davis Law Review. Canova was an early critic of financial deregulation and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. In the 1980s, he wrote critically of the federal bailout of Continental Illinois, the nation’s seventh largest commercial bank, and the collapse of the savings & loan industry. In the 1990s, prior to the Asian currency contagion, he argued against the International Monetary Fund’s capital account liberalization program. Throughout the Bush administration, he warned of an impending crisis in the bubble economy. Following the 2008 financial collapse, he lectured and published widely on the causes and consequences of the economic and financial crisis. In 2011, Canova was appointed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to serve on an Advisory Committee on Federal Reserve Reform with leading economists, including Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Reich, James Galbraith, and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Canova also writes and advocates in the areas of campaign finance and election reform, a research agenda informed by his 2016 campaign challenging the then chair of the Democratic National Committee for her U.S. House of Representatives seat in a hotly contested election. Canova’s campaign went viral, raising $3.8 million from 209,000 individual donations and setting a record at the time for the highest percentage (76%) of small online donations for any campaign for federal office. The election results were marred by evidence of statistical anomalies, allegations of electronic voting irregularities, and an order by Florida’s 17th Judicial Circuit Court finding that the Broward County Elections Supervisor had illegally destroyed every ballot cast. In 2019, Canova testified to the Florida Advisory Committee of the United States Civil Rights Commission about the systematic electronic disenfranchisement of voters in Florida elections.
Canova received his A.B. degree from Franklin and Marshall College and his J.D. degree, cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. He has a master’s diploma in graduate legal studies from the University of Stockholm where he was a Swedish Institute Visiting Scholar. He previously served as a legislative assistant to the late U.S. Senator Paul E. Tsongas and practiced law in New York City with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon.
Featured Article entitled “Central Bank Independence as Agency Capture: A Review of the Empirical Literature, Banking & Financial Services Policy Report 30:11 (Nov. 2011).
Principal, Ely & Company, Inc.
Bert Ely has specialized in deposit insurance and banking structure issues since 1981. In 1986, he became an early predictor of the S&L crisis and a taxpayer bailout of the FSLIC. In 1991, he was the first person to correctly predict the non-crisis in commercial banking; in 1992, he predicted an eventual taxpayer bailout of the Japanese banking system.
Bert continuously monitors conditions in the banking and S&L industries, monetary policy, and the growing federalization of credit risk. He has helped to draft legislation to enact the cross-guarantee concept for privatizing banking regulation and its related deposit insurance and systemic risks. He has testified on numerous occasions before congressional committees on banking issues and he often speaks on these matters to bankers and others.
Bert first established his consulting practice in 1972. Before that, he was the chief financial officer of a public company, a consultant with Touche, Ross & Company, and an auditor with Ernst & Ernst. He received his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1968 and his Bachelor's degree in economics in 1964 from Case Western Reserve University.
Professor of Law and Public Finance, NSU Florida Shepard Broad College of Law
Tim Canova is a Professor of Law and Public Finance at the NSU Shepard Broad College of Law, with broad experience in law teaching, private practice, and public policy. He teaches Constitutional Law II: First Amendment Law, Corporations, Business Entities, Regulation of Financial Institutions, and a Seminar on Law, Finance, and Markets at Nova. He previously taught at the Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law in Orange, California, where he served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the inaugural Betty Hutton Williams Professor of International Economic Law. He was first granted tenure at the University of New Mexico School of Law and he has taught as a visitor at the University of Arizona and the University of Miami.
Canova's work crosses the disciplines of law, public finance, history, and economics. He has been a leading critic of private central banks, including the Federal Reserve. His work has been published in more than two dozen book chapters and articles in the U.S. and overseas, including in the Oxford University Press, Edward Elgar Publishing, Harvard Law & Policy Review, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Brooklyn Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and UC Davis Law Review. Canova was an early critic of financial deregulation and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. In the 1980s, he wrote critically of the federal bailout of Continental Illinois, the nation’s seventh largest commercial bank, and the collapse of the savings & loan industry. In the 1990s, prior to the Asian currency contagion, he argued against the International Monetary Fund’s capital account liberalization program. Throughout the Bush administration, he warned of an impending crisis in the bubble economy. Following the 2008 financial collapse, he lectured and published widely on the causes and consequences of the economic and financial crisis. In 2011, Canova was appointed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to serve on an Advisory Committee on Federal Reserve Reform with leading economists, including Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Reich, James Galbraith, and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Canova also writes and advocates in the areas of campaign finance and election reform, a research agenda informed by his 2016 campaign challenging the then chair of the Democratic National Committee for her U.S. House of Representatives seat in a hotly contested election. Canova’s campaign went viral, raising $3.8 million from 209,000 individual donations and setting a record at the time for the highest percentage (76%) of small online donations for any campaign for federal office. The election results were marred by evidence of statistical anomalies, allegations of electronic voting irregularities, and an order by Florida’s 17th Judicial Circuit Court finding that the Broward County Elections Supervisor had illegally destroyed every ballot cast. In 2019, Canova testified to the Florida Advisory Committee of the United States Civil Rights Commission about the systematic electronic disenfranchisement of voters in Florida elections.
Canova received his A.B. degree from Franklin and Marshall College and his J.D. degree, cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. He has a master’s diploma in graduate legal studies from the University of Stockholm where he was a Swedish Institute Visiting Scholar. He previously served as a legislative assistant to the late U.S. Senator Paul E. Tsongas and practiced law in New York City with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon.
Featured Article entitled “Central Bank Independence as Agency Capture: A Review of the Empirical Literature, Banking & Financial Services Policy Report 30:11 (Nov. 2011).
Mercatus Center, George Mason University
New York University School of Law
Former Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law, University of Illinois College of Law
The University of Illinois College of Law community mourns the loss of Professor Larry E. Ribstein, the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair, Associate Dean for Research, and Co-Director of the Illinois Business Law and Policy Program, who passed away on December 24, 2011 in Fairfax, Virginia.
A member of the Illinois law faculty since 2002, Ribstein was a prodigious and pioneering scholar across a vast range of subjects, including partnerships and limited liability companies, corporate and securities law, choice of law, financial regulation, white-collar crime, legal ethics, and the legal profession. Among his over 170 publications, he was the author of The Rise of the Uncorporation (Oxford University Press, 2010),The Law Market (Oxford University Press, 2009) (with Erin A. O’Hara), The Sarbanes-Oxley Debate (American Enterprise Institute Press, 2006) (with Henry N. Butler), The Constitution and the Corporation (American Enterprise Institute Press, 1995) (with Butler), leading treatises (including Ribstein & Keatinge on Limited Liability Corporations and Bromberg & Ribstein on Partnerships), and two casebooks (Business Associations (4th ed. 2003, Lexis/Nexis) (with Peter V. Letsou) andUnincorporated Business Entities (4th ed. 2009, Lexis/Nexis) (with Jeffrey M. Lipshaw)). His latest book, The Rise of the Uncorporation, which examines the emergence and significance of non-corporate forms of business organization, was recently described in the Michigan Law Review as a “fascinating” study that “takes the traditional law and economics story of the corporation and turns it on its head.” A prominent commentator on law and business, Ribstein was the founder of Ideoblog (www.ideoblog.org) and the leading contributor to Truth on the Market (www.truthonthemarket.com), which was recently ranked by the ABA Journal as one of the 100 top law blogs.
Professor Ribstein taught a variety of courses at the College of Law, including business organizations, unincorporated business entities, and market regulation. He also taught an innovative colloquium on corporate law that brought together students and leading scholars to discuss current issues in the field.
“Larry was a scholar of incandescent intellect, breathtaking range, and unflagging energy,” said Dean Bruce Smith. “He cared passionately about his students and about transforming legal education to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. He invested selflessly in the professional development of junior faculty members – whether at Illinois or at other institutions. He cared deeply about the College of Law and contributed incalculably to it through his ideas, his engagement, and his counsel. And he cherished his family with a love that was boundless. Larry was a towering figure and an incomparable person, and he will be dearly missed.”
After earning his B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, Ribstein practiced for three years as an associate at McDermott, Will & Emery in Chicago. He began his teaching career at Mercer University Law School (1975-87), later serving on the faculty at George Mason University School of Law (1987-2002), including as George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law (1993-2002). He also held visiting professorships at New York University Law School, the University of Texas School of Law, Washington University School of Law, and St. Louis University School of Law. He served the legal-academic community in a variety of capacities, including on the Executive Committee of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Section on Securities Regulation, as chair of the AALS Section on Agency, Partnership and LLCs, and as editor and co-editor of The Supreme Court Economic Review.
Professor of Law and Public Finance, NSU Florida Shepard Broad College of Law
Tim Canova is a Professor of Law and Public Finance at the NSU Shepard Broad College of Law, with broad experience in law teaching, private practice, and public policy. He teaches Constitutional Law II: First Amendment Law, Corporations, Business Entities, Regulation of Financial Institutions, and a Seminar on Law, Finance, and Markets at Nova. He previously taught at the Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law in Orange, California, where he served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the inaugural Betty Hutton Williams Professor of International Economic Law. He was first granted tenure at the University of New Mexico School of Law and he has taught as a visitor at the University of Arizona and the University of Miami.
Canova's work crosses the disciplines of law, public finance, history, and economics. He has been a leading critic of private central banks, including the Federal Reserve. His work has been published in more than two dozen book chapters and articles in the U.S. and overseas, including in the Oxford University Press, Edward Elgar Publishing, Harvard Law & Policy Review, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Brooklyn Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and UC Davis Law Review. Canova was an early critic of financial deregulation and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. In the 1980s, he wrote critically of the federal bailout of Continental Illinois, the nation’s seventh largest commercial bank, and the collapse of the savings & loan industry. In the 1990s, prior to the Asian currency contagion, he argued against the International Monetary Fund’s capital account liberalization program. Throughout the Bush administration, he warned of an impending crisis in the bubble economy. Following the 2008 financial collapse, he lectured and published widely on the causes and consequences of the economic and financial crisis. In 2011, Canova was appointed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to serve on an Advisory Committee on Federal Reserve Reform with leading economists, including Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Reich, James Galbraith, and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Canova also writes and advocates in the areas of campaign finance and election reform, a research agenda informed by his 2016 campaign challenging the then chair of the Democratic National Committee for her U.S. House of Representatives seat in a hotly contested election. Canova’s campaign went viral, raising $3.8 million from 209,000 individual donations and setting a record at the time for the highest percentage (76%) of small online donations for any campaign for federal office. The election results were marred by evidence of statistical anomalies, allegations of electronic voting irregularities, and an order by Florida’s 17th Judicial Circuit Court finding that the Broward County Elections Supervisor had illegally destroyed every ballot cast. In 2019, Canova testified to the Florida Advisory Committee of the United States Civil Rights Commission about the systematic electronic disenfranchisement of voters in Florida elections.
Canova received his A.B. degree from Franklin and Marshall College and his J.D. degree, cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. He has a master’s diploma in graduate legal studies from the University of Stockholm where he was a Swedish Institute Visiting Scholar. He previously served as a legislative assistant to the late U.S. Senator Paul E. Tsongas and practiced law in New York City with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon.
Featured Article entitled “Central Bank Independence as Agency Capture: A Review of the Empirical Literature, Banking & Financial Services Policy Report 30:11 (Nov. 2011).
Mercatus Center, George Mason University
New York University School of Law
Former Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law, University of Illinois College of Law
The University of Illinois College of Law community mourns the loss of Professor Larry E. Ribstein, the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair, Associate Dean for Research, and Co-Director of the Illinois Business Law and Policy Program, who passed away on December 24, 2011 in Fairfax, Virginia.
A member of the Illinois law faculty since 2002, Ribstein was a prodigious and pioneering scholar across a vast range of subjects, including partnerships and limited liability companies, corporate and securities law, choice of law, financial regulation, white-collar crime, legal ethics, and the legal profession. Among his over 170 publications, he was the author of The Rise of the Uncorporation (Oxford University Press, 2010),The Law Market (Oxford University Press, 2009) (with Erin A. O’Hara), The Sarbanes-Oxley Debate (American Enterprise Institute Press, 2006) (with Henry N. Butler), The Constitution and the Corporation (American Enterprise Institute Press, 1995) (with Butler), leading treatises (including Ribstein & Keatinge on Limited Liability Corporations and Bromberg & Ribstein on Partnerships), and two casebooks (Business Associations (4th ed. 2003, Lexis/Nexis) (with Peter V. Letsou) andUnincorporated Business Entities (4th ed. 2009, Lexis/Nexis) (with Jeffrey M. Lipshaw)). His latest book, The Rise of the Uncorporation, which examines the emergence and significance of non-corporate forms of business organization, was recently described in the Michigan Law Review as a “fascinating” study that “takes the traditional law and economics story of the corporation and turns it on its head.” A prominent commentator on law and business, Ribstein was the founder of Ideoblog (www.ideoblog.org) and the leading contributor to Truth on the Market (www.truthonthemarket.com), which was recently ranked by the ABA Journal as one of the 100 top law blogs.
Professor Ribstein taught a variety of courses at the College of Law, including business organizations, unincorporated business entities, and market regulation. He also taught an innovative colloquium on corporate law that brought together students and leading scholars to discuss current issues in the field.
“Larry was a scholar of incandescent intellect, breathtaking range, and unflagging energy,” said Dean Bruce Smith. “He cared passionately about his students and about transforming legal education to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. He invested selflessly in the professional development of junior faculty members – whether at Illinois or at other institutions. He cared deeply about the College of Law and contributed incalculably to it through his ideas, his engagement, and his counsel. And he cherished his family with a love that was boundless. Larry was a towering figure and an incomparable person, and he will be dearly missed.”
After earning his B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, Ribstein practiced for three years as an associate at McDermott, Will & Emery in Chicago. He began his teaching career at Mercer University Law School (1975-87), later serving on the faculty at George Mason University School of Law (1987-2002), including as George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law (1993-2002). He also held visiting professorships at New York University Law School, the University of Texas School of Law, Washington University School of Law, and St. Louis University School of Law. He served the legal-academic community in a variety of capacities, including on the Executive Committee of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Section on Securities Regulation, as chair of the AALS Section on Agency, Partnership and LLCs, and as editor and co-editor of The Supreme Court Economic Review.
Wayne A. Abernathy, Wild Bells
Wayne A. Abernathy is a former U.S. Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions under President George W. Bush, receiving the Alexander Hamilton Award in recognition of his service. In that office he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. Prior to his work at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy served as Staff Director of the Senate Banking Committee, under Chairman Phil Gramm.
Following his service at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy worked for 15 years on the staff of the American Bankers Association, as Executive Vice President for Financial Institutions Policy and Regulatory Affairs.
Previous experience with the Senate Banking Committee includes serving as Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Securities during 1995-1998. From 1989 until 1994, Mr. Abernathy was a Republican economist for the committee. He previously worked as a senior legislative assistant for Senator Gramm during 1987-1989 and as an economist for the Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policy during 1981-1986, under Chairman Jake Garn.
Mr. Abernathy earned his bachelor’s degree in International Studies from The Johns Hopkins University in 1978. In 1980, he received a master’s degree in International Studies from the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University.
Professor of Law and Public Finance, NSU Florida Shepard Broad College of Law
Tim Canova is a Professor of Law and Public Finance at the NSU Shepard Broad College of Law, with broad experience in law teaching, private practice, and public policy. He teaches Constitutional Law II: First Amendment Law, Corporations, Business Entities, Regulation of Financial Institutions, and a Seminar on Law, Finance, and Markets at Nova. He previously taught at the Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law in Orange, California, where he served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the inaugural Betty Hutton Williams Professor of International Economic Law. He was first granted tenure at the University of New Mexico School of Law and he has taught as a visitor at the University of Arizona and the University of Miami.
Canova's work crosses the disciplines of law, public finance, history, and economics. He has been a leading critic of private central banks, including the Federal Reserve. His work has been published in more than two dozen book chapters and articles in the U.S. and overseas, including in the Oxford University Press, Edward Elgar Publishing, Harvard Law & Policy Review, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Brooklyn Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and UC Davis Law Review. Canova was an early critic of financial deregulation and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. In the 1980s, he wrote critically of the federal bailout of Continental Illinois, the nation’s seventh largest commercial bank, and the collapse of the savings & loan industry. In the 1990s, prior to the Asian currency contagion, he argued against the International Monetary Fund’s capital account liberalization program. Throughout the Bush administration, he warned of an impending crisis in the bubble economy. Following the 2008 financial collapse, he lectured and published widely on the causes and consequences of the economic and financial crisis. In 2011, Canova was appointed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to serve on an Advisory Committee on Federal Reserve Reform with leading economists, including Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Reich, James Galbraith, and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Canova also writes and advocates in the areas of campaign finance and election reform, a research agenda informed by his 2016 campaign challenging the then chair of the Democratic National Committee for her U.S. House of Representatives seat in a hotly contested election. Canova’s campaign went viral, raising $3.8 million from 209,000 individual donations and setting a record at the time for the highest percentage (76%) of small online donations for any campaign for federal office. The election results were marred by evidence of statistical anomalies, allegations of electronic voting irregularities, and an order by Florida’s 17th Judicial Circuit Court finding that the Broward County Elections Supervisor had illegally destroyed every ballot cast. In 2019, Canova testified to the Florida Advisory Committee of the United States Civil Rights Commission about the systematic electronic disenfranchisement of voters in Florida elections.
Canova received his A.B. degree from Franklin and Marshall College and his J.D. degree, cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. He has a master’s diploma in graduate legal studies from the University of Stockholm where he was a Swedish Institute Visiting Scholar. He previously served as a legislative assistant to the late U.S. Senator Paul E. Tsongas and practiced law in New York City with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon.
Featured Article entitled “Central Bank Independence as Agency Capture: A Review of the Empirical Literature, Banking & Financial Services Policy Report 30:11 (Nov. 2011).
Principal, Ely & Company, Inc.
Bert Ely has specialized in deposit insurance and banking structure issues since 1981. In 1986, he became an early predictor of the S&L crisis and a taxpayer bailout of the FSLIC. In 1991, he was the first person to correctly predict the non-crisis in commercial banking; in 1992, he predicted an eventual taxpayer bailout of the Japanese banking system.
Bert continuously monitors conditions in the banking and S&L industries, monetary policy, and the growing federalization of credit risk. He has helped to draft legislation to enact the cross-guarantee concept for privatizing banking regulation and its related deposit insurance and systemic risks. He has testified on numerous occasions before congressional committees on banking issues and he often speaks on these matters to bankers and others.
Bert first established his consulting practice in 1972. Before that, he was the chief financial officer of a public company, a consultant with Touche, Ross & Company, and an auditor with Ernst & Ernst. He received his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1968 and his Bachelor's degree in economics in 1964 from Case Western Reserve University.
Redistribution of Wealth: The Legal and Moral Arguments
Irvine, CaliforniaPanel 1: Bankruptcy or Bailout?
Barry Adler, Timothy Canova, Garett Jones, Michael E. Levine, Larry Ribstein
Prof. Barry Adler, New York University School of Law Prof. Timothy Canova, Chapman University School...
Panel 1: Bankruptcy or Bailout?
Barry Adler, Timothy Canova, Garett Jones, Michael E. Levine, Larry Ribstein
Prof. Barry Adler, New York University School of Law Prof. Timothy Canova, Chapman University School...
Panel 1: Bankruptcy or Bailout?
12th Annual Faculty Conference
New Orleans, LAPanel I: How Did We Get into the Mess We Are in Today?
Wayne A. Abernathy, Timothy Canova, James Carr, Bert Ely, Craig L. Hymowitz
Presentation by Bert Ely of a paper titled: "Bad Rules Produce Bad Outcomes: Underlying Public Policy Causes...
Panel I: How Did We Get into the Mess We Are in Today?
The Financial Services Bailout
Washington, DC