On Oct. 9, Michael Dorff presented The Public Benefit Corporation: Panacea or Pipe Dream? as part of the Center for Business Law faculty speaker series at the School of Law. Dorff is the Executive Director of the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy and a Professor of Practice at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law. He teaches and researches in the areas of corporate law and entrepreneurship, with a focus on social enterprise.
Dorff’s lecture related to his recently published book, Becoming a Public Benefit Corporation: Express Your Values, Energize Stakeholders, Make the World a Better Place (Stanford University Press 2023). During the lecture, he explored the origins of benefit corporations, how they are structured, what is their purpose, who invests in them, and why investors choose to invest in them. He focused on the difficult issues of whether and when it is possible to combine profit seeking with pursuing a social purpose.
In discussing the lecture, Professor Eric Chaffee said, “Benefit corporations are an important addition to the myriads of different forms that a business association might choose.” He continued, “Professor Dorff’s work related to these emerging business entities is important because of the contributions that these entities might make to societal welfare and the economy. The Center for Business Law was lucky to welcome him to campus.”
The Center for Business law at Case Western, which is co-directed by Juliet P. Kostritsky and Eric C. Chaffee, is an initiative to prepare future leaders to understand business issues facing business entities, engage in research on the role and impact of government in the regulation of business and to foster public debate regarding the role of government in the regulation of businesses. It is part of the robust business law curriculum at the Law School.