Business & Entrepreneurship

Critical data for more than 2,300 federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) cases now are available online thanks to a multi-year effort of researchers at Washington University School of Law’s Center for Empirical Research in the Law (CERL). The EEOC Litigation Project, which spans the period between 1997 and 2006, makes readily available detailed information about the EEOC’s enforcement litigation to legal scholars, social scientists, and policy-makers.

Panos Kouvelis, PhD, senior associate dean and director of executive programs at Olin Business School and an expert in the field of supply chain management, has been named to the U.S. Commerce Department’s new Advisory Committee on Supply Chain Competitiveness.

Academicians, business leaders, judiciary members and a key watchdog group will come together to discuss the future of legal education at “The Law School in the New Legal Environment Symposium” at Washington University School of Law Friday, Oct. 26. The symposium will examine issues such as affordability and access to legal education; faculty; preparation for practice; job placement; and online legal education and how it will change traditional law schools. “Lawyers and law students are facing serious challenges with employment, debt and career satisfaction,” says Kent D. Syverud, JD, dean of the law school. “This symposium will address how American law schools can embrace needed change rather than avoiding it.”

Olin Business School MBA student Michael McLaughlin made a triumphant return to campus Oct. 2 after hiking back-to-back the Appalachian and Ozark Trails, a journey of more than 2,500 miles.

The law school is hosting a Special Session of the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District on Thursday, October 11 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom (Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 310) beginning at 1 p.m. The attorneys for the three cases―regarding a property line dispute, legal representation of a defendant in a child sexual abuse case, and an alderman’s defamation claims―will have 15 minutes each to argue their sides.  A Q&A on judicial procedure and an informal Q&A on judicial clerkships will follow the special session.

International economic forecaster and social observer Jeremy Rifkin will talk about preparing for the third industrial revolution at noon Thursday, Oct. 11, in Graham Chapel. A book signing will precede the lecture.

The annual celebration of Pulpit Freedom Sunday on Oct. 7 encourages pastors to preach politics from the pulpit. The Internal Revenue Code exempts certain organizations including churches from taxation, but prohibits them as a condition of tax-exemption from “any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” “Both the restriction and Pulpit Freedom Sunday raise important questions about the relationship between church and state, the role of religious argument in political discourse, and the significance of clergy in political debate,” says John Inazu, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and expert on religion and the Constitution.

Signs, billboards, and placards are such a familiar part of the landscape that we often don’t notice them. However, even the humblest “on premise” sign is protected by the highest law of the land, the U.S. Constitution’s free speech clause. Daniel R. Mandelker, the Howard A. Stamper Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, has set out to help local governments and municipalities appreciate that fact with his new book, Free Speech Law for On Premises Signs. Published online at ussc.org and landuselaw.wustl.edu, the book will be released in hard copy later this year by the United States Sign Council.

Washington University in St. Louis has been ranked among the top schools in the nation for entrepreneurship by Entrepreneur magazine’s annual Princeton Review report. The annual survey names the schools with the top 25 undergraduate and top 25 graduate entrepreneurship programs in the nation.

More than 2 million consumers got to gloat Friday about their shrewdness in procuring an iPhone 5, with its larger screen and 200 additional features through its new operating system. But once the novelty wears off, will they still enjoy their purchase? It depends on why they bought it, says new research from a marketing professor at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.