International Institute of Law and Finance

The International Institute of Law and Finance (IILF) is a non-profit, non-partisan institution dedicated to promoting independent research, academic papers, teaching, discussion, and public policy initiatives in law and finance. IILF focuses on the intersection of law, finance, and the regulation of the financial markets, one of the fastest growing and most important areas of academic and policy interest. In particular, IILF’s emphasis is on cutting edge issues in law and finance, including corporate governance, executive compensation, financial innovation, fairness, and public disclosure in financial markets, and other developing topics in corporate and securities law and finance theory and practice. IILF builds on the work of the Law and Finance Institute, founded in 2006, which shared this mission.

Our Mission & Structure

Our Organization

IILF’s board of directors consists of leading academics in the fields of law and finance:
Gina-Gail Fletcher, Duke Law School
Stephen Fraidin, Partner, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, and Visiting Lecturer Yale Law School
Wei Jiang, Emory University's Goizueta Business School
Frank Partnoy, BerkeleyLaw, BerkeleyHaas
Alan Schwartz, Yale Law School, Yale School of Management

“What is done in England by combination, unless it be the management of municipal concerns, is most generally done by a combination of individuals, established by mere articles of agreement. On the other hand, what is done here by the co-operation of several persons, is, in the greater number of instances, the result of a consolidation effected by an express act or charter of incorporation. ... We cannot but be impressed with a deep sense of the importance of this law in our own country ... In no country have corporations been multiplied to so great an extent, as in our own. If a native of Europe, who has never traversed the wide barrier which separates him from us should be informed, even with tolerable accuracy, of the number of Banking Companies, Insurance Companies, Canal Companies, Turnpike Companies, Manufacturing Companies &c. ... that are diffused throughout these United States, and fully invested with corporate privileges, he could not be made to believe that he was told the truth.”

-- Joseph Angell and Samuel Ames, A Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations Aggregate (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little & Wilkins, 1832), v-vi, 35.