Welcome back to Ahead of the Curve. I'm Karen Sloan, legal education editor at Law.com, and I'll be your host for this weekly look at innovation and notable developments in legal education.

This week, I'm looking at the budding field of Law and Macroeconomics and what it takes to establish a new area of legal inquiry. Georgetown University Law Center last week hosted the first ever Law and Macroeconomics Conference. Next up, I'm checking in on Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr., who was at the center of a donor controversy this summer at the University of Alabama. Culverhouse is once again opening his wallet for legal education—this time directing his largesse to the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

Please share your thoughts and feedback with me at [email protected] or on Twitter: @KarenSloanNLJ

   

Welcome to the Rodeo, Law and Macroeconomics

Pretty much everyone at this point is familiar with Law and Economics—the analysis of law through the lens of economic theory that emerged midway through the last century out of the University of Chicago. But what about Law and Macroeconomics?

That's a new one to me, as far as the "Law and…" interdisciplinary legal fields go, so it caught my attention when I got a notice of a two-day Law and Macroeconomics Conference held last Friday and Saturday at Georgetown. The organizers, Georgetown professors Anna Gelpern and Adam Levitin, landed some big names for the event, including former Fed Chair Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Vice Chair Randal Quarles.

All of which got me thinking, "What, exactly, is Law and Macroeconomics, and how does one go about establishing a new field of legal study?" Thankfully, Gelpern hopped on the phone with me to set me straight on both points. Gelpern spent a good 30 minutes talking me through the idea behind law and macroeconomics, but for the sake of brevity I'm going to oversimplify this. The traditional law and economics field focuses on microeconomics. For example, the legal aspects of a product or service making its way to consumers, or the behavior of individual actors in economic transactions. But there are a host of larger economic issues that are far more complex that also interplay with the law and government, yet have not been studied by legal scholars in a targeted way, until now. Here's Gelpern, in a Q&A that Georgetown posted on its website:

"Macroeconomics is about aggregates, about an economy as a whole–aggregate supply and demand, not supply and demand for discrete products and services, like laptops or cappuccino at Starbucks. It considers money and overall price levels, inflation and inflation expectations, unemployment, consumer and government spending, investment, and growth in the national economy, not a particular market. Then there is the global dimension–trade, currencies, international capital flows-–and the time dimension, the ups and downs of the business cycle. It's about the big picture, where entire populations and complex political institutions are the protagonists."

Essentially, macroeconomics is steeped in Constitutional Law and administrative law. A good way to illustrate that is the 2008 financial crisis, when suddenly the government was working furiously to stabilize the economy and was bailing out private firms. In fact, it was that very crisis that spurred a wave of legal scholarship on issues that fall under the law and macroeconomics umbrella and got Gelpern and Levitin thinking that perhaps Law and Macroeconomics should be established as a formal field of legal study. (They aren't the only ones writing on law and macroeconomics. Isolated papers have been published on the subject for decades, and Yale law professor Yair Listokin published a book on Law and Macroeconomics this year.) Another way to put it is law and macroeconomics looks at how political forces interplay with these big picture economic ones, like inflation, unemployment or booms and busts.

That brings me to my second query: How does one go about creating a new field of legal studies? I posed that question to Gelpern, who told me, in a nutshell, that you reach out to a broad array of people with expertise in the law and in economics, get them in a room together, and just start talking. Finding a shared understanding of what Law and Macroeconomics is, as well as a shared vocabulary around the subject, is the goal for the conference, along with galvanizing a set of research questions to tackle and a shared approach to that research. Connecting with other scholars interested in the topic is another aim. That won't all happen over the course of a single conference, Gelpern told me, but it's a start.

"We want to engage a different set of people, and that's a much bigger challenge," Gelpern said. "We're not necessarily looking to engage people who are already in law and economics. We want to engage macroeconomists and constitutional and administrative lawyers in the project. Our sense is that this is where the payoff lies—that it's about really fundamental assumptions and fundamental preoccupations of core legal and economic disciplines."

 

Remember Hugh Culverhouse? He's Back

The University of Alabama School of Law no longer bears the name of donor Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr., which was stripped from campus in June following a dispute over—depending on whose story you believe—either abortion rights or a donor meddling in law school affairs. (Really, if you aren't familiar with this saga from the past year, check out this story. It's a doozy)

But Culverhouse, a Miami-based lawyer and real estate developer, hasn't soured on law school philanthropy. He's just directing it elsewhere. The University of Florida Levin College of Law last week announced the third-annual Culverhouse Challenge, where he is offering a 10:1 match of donations to the tune of $1.1 million, with the funds going to student scholarships.

"I remain committed to legal education," said Culverhouse, who obtained his J.D. from the Gainesville law school in 1974. "As Florida's flagship law school, UF Law must continue to provide access to those who may not have the ability to afford a legal education. As alumni, we should rise together in support of future lawyers and leaders of our communities."

Culverhouse committed $1.5 million to the law school in 2017, followed by $500,000 the following year, each of which were matches that helped to raise more funds from alumni. This year, the school is aiming to generate donations from Florida Law alumni in government and public interest jobs, first-time donors, and alumni who graduated within the past 15 years.

"We are so grateful for Hugh's continued support of legal education and UF Law," said Florida Law dean Laura Rosenbury. "Another infusion of support from the Culverhouse Challenge will fuel UF Law's continued rise."

And for good measure, Culverhouse this month also wrote a $250,000 check to support a new Planned Parenthood clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.

Extra Credit Reading

Attorneys delivered opening statements in the Dan Markel murder trial on Thursday, offering divergent theories about who killed the Florida State law professor in 2014.

Boston University law professor Danielle Citron was among the 26 Macarthur Fellows for 2019 named last week—a prestigious award that comes with a $625,000 prize.

First Amendment clinics are proliferating at law schools thanks to growing demand for hands-on learning and an influx of outside funding.

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I'll be back next week with more news and updates on the future of legal education. Until then, keep in touch at [email protected]