Bruce Grohsgal
Professor
Director, Institute of Delaware Corporate and Business Law
Bruce Grohsgal is the Helen S. Balick Professor in Business Bankruptcy Law and the Director of the Institute of Delaware Corporate and Business Law. He joined the faculty in July 2014. He received his B.A. from Brandeis University in 1977 and his J.D. from Columbia Law School 1980, where he was a Stone Scholar.
He most recently was a partner in the Wilmington, Delaware office of Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones, LLP, and has represented debtors, creditors’ committees, and trustees in chapter 11 bankruptcy cases and litigation, including the debtors in Solyndra, Global Home Products/Anchor Hocking/Mirro/WearEver, Chi Chi’s and Trans World Airlines, the creditors’ committees in Freedom Communications (Orange County Register) and Jevic Transportation, and the chapter 11 trustee in Le-Nature’s. He previously was a partner in Wolf Block Schorr & Solis-Cohen, LLP, in Wilmington and Philadelphia. He is admitted to practice in Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York.
Professor Grohsgal was a Senior Fellow at Americans for Financial Reform, Washington, D.C., from October 2012 to January 2013, while on Sabbatical from his former firm. He was the Chair of the Bankruptcy Section of the Delaware State Bar Association in 2008-2009. He has spoken on numerous bankruptcy topics, including “first day” hearings, going concern and other asset sales, executive compensation, derivatives, repos and financial instruments in bankruptcy, and chapter 11 developments.
Professor Emeritus
Director Emeritus, Institute of Delaware Corporate and Business Law
Publications | SSRN Papers
Professor Lawrence A. Hamermesh received his B.A. from Haverford College in 1973 and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1976. Professor Hamermesh joined the Widener faculty in 1994. Prior to joining Widener, Professor Hamermesh worked as associate with Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell in Wilmington, Delaware, from 1976-84, and as a partner at Morris, Nichols from 1985-94. Professor Hamermesh writes extensively in areas of corporate and business law. Since 1995 he has been a member of the Corporation Law Council of the Corporation Law Section of the Delaware State Bar Association, which is responsible for the annual review and modernization of the Delaware General Corporation Law, and was Chair of the Council from 2002-2004. Professor Hamermesh also serves as a faculty advisor to the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law.
Professor Hamermesh was on leave during the 2010-2011 academic year, completing an 18-month term as senior special counsel in the Office of Chief Counsel, Division of Corporation Finance of the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C. In that capacity, Professor Hamermesh contributed significantly to the Commission’s July 14, 2010 concept release on the U.S. proxy system, and he also received a Law and Policy Award conferred by the Commission on staff members who contributed significantly to the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.
Professor Hamermesh also published “Delaware Corporate Law and the Model Business Corporation Act: A Study in Symbiosis,” 74 Duke Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems 107 (2011), co-authored with Jeffrey M. Gorris and Leo E. Strine, Jr., and “Silos, Corporate Law, and Bankruptcy Law,” Delaware Lawyer (Fall 2010).
Professor Hamermesh was also featured as a speaker on several panels, including programs for the Practicing Law Institute in New York, the Federalist Society in Washington, D.C., and the American College of Business Court Judges meeting at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia.
During the 2010-2011 academic year, Professor Hamermesh continued to serve as a member of the Council of the Corporation Law Section of the Delaware State Bar Association, the group responsible for continuing review and drafting of proposed amendments to the Delaware General Corporation Law. He also continued to serve as a member of the Council of the American Bar Association Section of Business Law, and as a member of the board of editors of The Business Lawyer, published by the Business Law Section.
Courses: Corporate Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions, Securities Regulation, Business Organizations, Corporate Takeovers, and Professional Responsibility.
Associate Professor of Law
Professor Paul L. Regan received a B.S. from Villanova University in 1979 and a J.D. from Temple University in 1982. Following graduation from law school, Professor Regan served as a litigation associate with Fellheimer, Eichen & Goodman, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1982-83; litigation a associate with Liebert, Short, Fitzpatrick & Lavin, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1983-85; and a corporate litigation associate with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Wilmington, Delaware, from 1985-94. Professor Regan joined the faculty at Widener as visiting associate professor of law and served in that capacity from 1994-1995. Since 1995, Professor Regan has served as an associate professor of law.
Professor Regan, who teaches and writes in the areas of business organizations, advanced corporation law, corporate finance, and contracts, is Assistant Director of the Institute of Delaware Corporate and Business Law. He is regular commentator on mergers and acquisitions developments, including the hostile bid by Air Products and Chemicals, Ind. for Airgas, Inc., the $18.5 billion hostile bid by French drug manufacturer Sanofi S.A. for U.S. based biopharmaceutical company Genzyme, and the negotiated acquisition by 3M Company of control of Cogent Inc.
In February 2011, at the invitation of retired Delaware Supreme Court Justice Joseph Walsh, Professor Regan participated as a presenter and panelist on executive compensation at the 16th Annual Rubenstein-Walsh Seminar in Professionalism and Ethics in Wilmington.
Professor Regan helped organize the symposium held at Widener in April 2011 entitled “Irreconcilable Differences: Conflicts in Change of Control Transactions.” During the symposium he presented a forthcoming paper on Transactional Justification addressing the availability of preliminary injunctive relief in corporate sale of control transactions. He also moderated another panel during the symposium in which prominent Delaware corporate practitioners commented on recent developments in change of control transactions.
In July 2011 Professor Regan presented a forthcoming article on Human Rights Accountability of Multinational Corporations at an international conference on Social Economy and Corporate Responsibility at the Congress of the Onati Institute for the Sociology of Law in Onati, Spain.
Also in July 2011, Professor Regan participated in a panel presentation entitled “Delaware: The First State for Corporation Law” at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Librarians in Philadelphia, PA. Other panelists included Justice Randy J. Holland of the Supreme Court of Delaware; Robert Saunders of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Andrea Unterberger of Corporation Service Company; and Leslie Leach, law librarian for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
Courses: Business Organizations, Advanced Corporations, Corporate Finance, and Business Principles.
Emeritus Professor of Law
Professor Larry D. Barnett received a B.A. summa cum laude from the University of California at Los Angeles; an M.S. from Oregon State University; a Ph.D. from Florida State University; and a J.D. with Honors from the University of Florida. He joined the faculty of the Widener University Law School in 1978 and was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Leiden in The Netherlands in 1979-80. His books include Mutual Funds and Federal Regulation, a casebook for law school courses on the federal Investment Company Act and Investment Advisers Act, and Legal Construct, Social Concept, a book on the sociology of law. In addition, Professor Barnett founded Population Research and Policy Review, a journal in the field of demography that has been published since 1982, and he served as editor-in-chief for its first eleven volumes. Professor Barnett also serves as a faculty advisor to the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law.
Professor Barnett is a leading exponent of the thesis that the doctrines and concepts of law in a society are attributable to the properties of the society in which the law exists. A review of his forthcoming book “The Place of Law: The Role and Limits of Law in Society” states that the book “should be required reading in all law schools” because it “offers a framework for the study of law that convincingly demonstrates that only when we consider law’s social context can we then explain and predict its content.
Professor Barnett published an article titled “The Public–Private Dichotomy in Morality and Law” in 18 Journal of Law and Policy 541 (2010). The article illustrates the thesis of the social basis of law with the federal Investment Advisers Act and also reports a study in which data obtained from adults in a national sample survey were analyzed to identify the characteristics of individuals that affect whether morality is viewed as a private matter (and hence inappropriate for regulation) or a public issue (and hence appropriate for regulation).
During the 2010–2011 academic year, Professor Barnett participated in two professional meetings in Europe. The most recent was the International Conference on the Social Economy, which was held in Spain on July 6–8, 2011. At this meeting, Professor Barnett presented a paper titled “Mutual Fund Regulation in Europe: An Empirical Test of a Macrosociological Framework for Law.” The Conference was attended by approximately 120 persons from more than 20 countries.
In addition, Professor Barnett presented a paper at the 2010 annual meeting of the Research Committee on Sociology of Law. His paper at this meeting, which was held in Sweden in July 2010, was titled “Societal Properties and Law on Same-Sex Non-Marital Partnerships and Same-Sex Marriage in European Union Nations.” The paper is forthcoming in volume 25 of the Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development and was the outcome of a research project in which Professor Barnett was joined by Professor Pietro Saitta of the University of Messina (Italy); earlier in 2010, the study had been presented by Professor Barnett at four universities in Italy.
Courses: Mutual Funds, Securities Regulation, and Professional Responsibility.
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Scheuer is joining Widener Law School in the fall of 2011 as its newest faculty member. He graduated from Boston College Law School and will be teaching business associations, bankruptcy and business planning.
Professor Scheuer has previously taught contract drafting at Boston College Law School and Boston University School of Law. He co-authored the lead article in Catholic University Law Review’s winter 2011 edition with Professor Judith McMorrow from Boston College Law School. The article, entitled The Moral Responsibility of the Corporate Lawyer, dealt with the issue of lawyer accountability for corporate client actions. In the fall of 2010 he authored a chapter of the treatise Financing a Massachusetts Business published by MCLE New England. This chapter dealt with leveraged buyouts and going- private transactions. He also published a short article entitled Duty to Report Attorney Misconduct for the American Bankruptcy Institute’s 2010 Northeast Conference. Prior to teaching, he worked as a corporate associate with the Boston office of Goodwin Procter, LLP and as a professional ballet dancer in Canada.
Courses: Business Organizations, Business Planning
3 thoughts on “Faculty”