Professor Renee Jones teaches and writes in the corporate area.  Her courses at BC Law include Corporations, Securities Regulation, Corporate Governance and Current Topics in Securities Regulation. 

Her scholarship focuses on corporate governance, corporate ethics and the federal-state relationship in corporate regulation.  She has written several important articles on corporate federalism.  Her article Rethinking Corporate Federalism in the Era of Corporate Reform (Iowa Journal of Corporate Law) was reprinted in Corporate Practice Commentator as one of the top corporate law articles of the year.  It was also selected for presentation to the Section on Securities Regulation at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in January 2004. 

During the 2005-2006 academic year Professor Jones held a prestigious fellowship at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, where she examined the relationship between corporate law and the ethics of American corporate leaders.  Her article Law, Norms, and the Breakdown of the Board: Promoting Accountability in Corporate Governance (Iowa Law Review) analyzes the influence of social norms on the conduct of corporate officers and directors.  The article recommends reforms to the director liability regime to better motivate corporate officials to fulfill their fiduciary duties.  Professor Jones presented this article in January 2007 to the Section on Business Associations at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools as part of a distinguished panel discussing recent Delaware court decisions in the landmark Walt Disney Company Derivative Litigation.

Among her many professional and community activities, Professor Jones is a member of the American Law Institute and has served as Co-Chair of the Securities Law Committee of the Boston Bar Association.  She has also served as a member of the American Bar Association House of Delegates, the editorial board of Human Rights Magazine, and the New England Committee of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Before joining BC Law in 2002, Professor Jones practiced for eight years at the Boston law firm Hill & Barlow where she represented private and public companies on corporate and securities matters.

Read her blog Corporate Law and Democracy: http://reneejones.wordpress.com

EDUCATION

A.B., Princeton University; J.D., Harvard University.

PROMOTIONS

Promoted from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure.

WORKS IN PROGRESS

Legitimacy and Corporate Law: The Case for Regulatory Redundancy

RECENT ACTIVITIES

Presentations

"Crafting Corporate Law," Panel on Firms, Markets and Social Welfare, Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, May 30, 2008.

Sarbanes Oxley's Insight: The Role of Distrust, Conference on The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002: Five Years Later; University of Maryland Law School, October 18, 2007.

AALS Section on Business Associations, Panel on Dimensions of Disney, January 2007.

“Law, Norms, and the Breakdown of the Board,” Washington and Lee University Law School Faculty Colloquium, September 25, 2006.

Book Panel, “Trust and Honesty: America’s Business Culture at a Crossroad, by Tamar Frankel,” Chair and Commentator, Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland, July 6, 2006

“Does Federalism Matter?: Its Perplexing Role in the Corporate Governance Debate,” Business Law Conference on Modern Federalism and its Impact on American Business, Wake Forest University Law School, April 7, 2006

“Law, Norms and the Breakdown of the Board,” presented to the Faculty Fellows Seminar, Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Harvard University, February 7, 2006; also presented at Boston College Law School Faculty Workshop, August 11, 2005, and Northeastern University Law School Faculty Colloquium, March 17, 2005.

“Do Women Corporate Scholars Speak ‘In a Different Voice’?” presented at the Conference on Women and the “New” Corporate Governance, University of Maryland Law School, April 8, 2005.

Other
Co-Chair of Boston Bar Association Continuing Legal Education Seminar, Corporate Governance Update: Governing in the Shadow of Scandal, on April 6, 1994.

COURSES

Fall '08: No courses taught
Spring '09: Corporations; Securities Litigation and Enforcement

• "Sarbanes-Oxley's Insight: The Role of Distrust."  Journal of Business & Technology Law 3, no.2 (2008): 437-442.
  
• "Law, Norms, and the Breakdown of the Board: Promoting Accountability in Corporate Governance." Iowa Law Review  92 (2006): 105-158.
  
• "Does Federalism Matter?: Its Perplexing Role in the Corporate Governance Debate," Wake Forest Law Review 41, no.3 (Fall 2006): 879-912.
  
• “Dynamic Federalism: Competition, Cooperation, and Securities Enforcement.” Connecticut Insurance Law Journal 11 (Fall 2004): 108-131.
  
• "Rethinking Corporate Federalism in the Era of Corporate Reform." Journal of Corporation Law 29 (Spring 2004): 625-663.
  
• "The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002: A Primer." Business Torts Journal 10, no.3 (Summer 2003): 1, 19-21.
  
• Developments in the Law, "Nonprofit Corporations." (III. Tax Exemption.) Harvard Law Review 105 (May 1992): 1612-1633.
  
• Recent Cases, "Preemption Doctrine After Cipollone." Harvard Law Review 106 (Nov.1993): 963-968.