Lectures & Conferences

Upcoming Lecture Series Events

Robert C. Casad Comparative Law Lecture

The Casad lecture series is named in honor of Professor Emeritus Robert C. Casad, who joined the faculty at the KU School of Law in 1959 and was internationally known for his scholarship in comparative civil procedure. After retirement from classroom teaching in 1997, he continued to conduct research and publish books and articles until his death in 2023.

2026 Robert C. Casad Comparative Law Lecture

Nov. 12, 2026 | 3:45 p.m. | 107 Green Hall

Reception to follow in the first-floor commons

"Comparative Corporate Governance and the Pathology of Controlling Shareholder Power"

The evolution of corporate law has often been framed as a series of neutral, efficiency-driven adjustments. In examining the messier reality of India’s corporate governance landscape, she will discuss how corporate governance is instead defined by systemic stakeholder tensions. Drawing on two decades of governance reforms, the lecture explores how formal regulatory convergence with Western monitoring structures falters under the presence of concentrated ownership and deep-seated controlling stockholder dominance. The discussion evaluates the structural vulnerabilities behind risk oversight failures and assesses how mandatory stakeholder mechanisms, such as corporate social responsibility regimes, can be co-opted to entrench controlling shareholder power and facilitate political capture. The lecture positions India’s highly concentrated wealth and regulatory environment not as a peripheral anomaly, but as a critical comparative mirror for the contemporary United States, where the proliferation of dual-class, founder-dominated firms exhibits parallel institutional vulnerabilities.

Afra Afsharipour, John D. Ayer Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Business Law and Society at the University of California, Davis, School of Law will deliver this year's lecture. She researches in the areas of comparative corporate law, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, and transactional law. She has taught courses in business associations, mergers and acquisitions, startups and venture capital, and antitrust. Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in several books and law reviews. Afsharipour has been a visiting scholar in India, China and Taiwan and is quoted regularly by leading national and international news outlets .Prior to joining the Davis faculty, she was an attorney at the international law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. Afsharipour is an elected member of the American Law Institute. She was named a research member of the European Corporate Governance Institute in 2023 and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation in 2019. She has held leadership positions in the Association of American Law Schools and the American Society of Comparative Law. Afsharipour received her J.D. from Columbia Law School.

Registration will open soon.