Professor Widen Teaches at University of Miami School of Law!
Selected quotes:
"Business law is about as complicated as Donkey Kong."
"Each year half of the students at law schools around the country are ranked in the bottom half of their classes. Why should UM be any different?"
"Clients and firms don't pay you for incompetence."
Curriculum Vitae for William H. Widen:
Professor Widen practiced commercial and corporate law at Cravath, Swaine & Moore from 1984 to 2001, where he was a partner from 1991.
Professor Widen was an Adjunct Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School from 1993-2002.
During 1983-84, Professor Widen clerked for the Honorable Levin H. Campbell, Chief Judge, First Circuit Court of Appeals, Boston, Massachusetts.
From 1980-1983, Professor Widen attended Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated cum laude in 1983 with a juris doctor degree.
From 1976-1980, Professor Widen attended Stanford University, where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with honors and distinction in 1980 with an AB in philosophy.
Publications, Projects, et cetera:
Professor Widen currently is conducting research on the doctrine of substantive consolidation with the assistance of a grant from the American Bankruptcy Institute. See Press Release.
Professor Widen was quoted in Forbes (January 2004), Business Week (February 2004), the Washington Post (March 2006) and the Houston Chronicle (May 2006) for his article "Enron at the Margin," published in the May 2003 edition of The Business Lawyer.
Corporate Form and Substantive Consolidation, (March 2006) Express Preprint Series, Working Paper 1152, (forthcoming February 2007 Geo. Wash. L. Rev.)
Prevalence of Substantive Consolidation in Large Bankruptcies from 2000-2004: Preliminary Results , AM. BANKR. INST. L. REV. (forthcoming Spring 2006)
Spectres of Law and Economics, 102 Mich. L. Rev. 1423(2004)(review of Jeanne L. Schroeder, The Triumph of Venus, The Erotics of the Market)
Lord of the Liens: Towards Greater Efficiency in Secured Syndicated Lending, 25 Card. L. Rev. 1577 (2004)
Enron at the Margin, 58 Bus. Law. 961 (2003)
Letters of Credit, Voidable Preferences, and the "Independence" Principle, 54 Bus. Law. (August, 1999) (with David Carlson)
The Earmarking Defense to Voidable Preference Liability: A Reconceptualization, 73 Am. Bankr. L. J. (Summer 1999) (with David Carlson).
Musings
on Law and Games:
So, just how complicated is donkey kong? Or pac-man. Or any other modern incarnation of the video game? And how did you learn to play these games, if in fact you did? Chances are, you did not learn to play the game by reading an instruction booklet. Maybe you learned, quarter by quarter, in some bar or video arcade. Maybe your best friend's parents bought Atari, Nintendo or Playstation and you played for free until sent home. Bit by bit you learned the rules of the game the hard way--your electronic being was repeatedly eaten, smashed or otherwise munged (generally in sets of three).
In bits and pieces you learned the rules. "Generally the bad guys eat me if they catch me; provided, however, if I eat a magic pill, for approximately 5 seconds thereafter, I turn blue and can eat them. At the end of five seconds, I am no longer blue and the bad guys can eat me again." Such is a sample verbalization of the type of rules you learned by playing the game. So formalized, the video game starts to look a lot like law. Indeed, the behavior of the electronic beings on screen is programmed in the code that establishes the parameters of the game.
Some video work:
View some short videos by Willilam H. Widen. They have sound and
and may be viewed in a Windows Media Player.
UCC Article 9 in One Minute;
Castle of Contracts
If you do not have a plug-in to view the films through an embedded media player, try the direct links below. If the film opens in the side-bar to Internet Explorer, you may need to click on the player in the lower right corner on the arrows to "undock" it so that you may resize and enlarge the image. You do not need to do this if you view the films through the above links which have embedded media player screens in the web page.
UCC Article 9 in One Minute;
Castle of Contracts
