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Paul Regan

Associate Professor

B.S., Villanova University

J.D., Temple University School of Law 


Contact

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 302.477.2171

About

Paul L. Regan is Associate Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Institute of Delaware Corporate and Business Law at Delaware Law School Professor Regan received a B.S. from Villanova University in 1979 and a J.D. from Temple University Law School in 1982.



Following graduation from law school, Professor Regan served as Litigation Associate, Fellheimer, Eichen & Goodman, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1982-83; Litigation Associate, Liebert, Short, Fitzpatrick & Lavin, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1983-85; and Corporate Litigation Associate, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Wilmington, Delaware, from 1985-94.


Professor Regan joined the faculty at Delaware Law School as Visiting Associate Professor of Law and served in that capacity from 1994-95. Since 1995, Professor Regan has served as Associate Professor of Law and was awarded tenure in 2000. Professor Regan was admitted to practice in Delaware in 1985 and he remains an active member of the Delaware bar today. He teaches and writes in the areas of Business Organizations, Delaware Corporation Law, Corporate Finance, and Contracts.  Professor Regan has received the Outstanding Faculty Award four times, as voted by the graduating classes of 2002, 2008, 2018, and 2022. In 2022 Professor Regan also won the Douglas E. Ray Excellence in Faculty Scholarship Award. Professor Regan also has served as Director of Widener's International Law Institutes in Geneva, Switzerland (Summer 2001 and 2003) and Venice, Italy (Summer 2007 and 2014). He has presented at international conferences in Iceland and Spain, and in 2019 served as a visiting guest lecturer for law students in Braga, Portugal and A Coruna, Spain.

Professor Regan is a member of the Board on Professional Responsibility of the Supreme Court of Delaware. He also serves a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Philadelphia Chapter of the National Association of Corporate Directors. Previously, Professor Regan served as liaison to the Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners for the Law School. Professor Regan has also been active in a number of civic and professional organizations, volunteering for the past twenty years as an advisor and additional coach for a mock trial team at a local high school, working with a high school youth group in a local church and coaching youth soccer and track and field teams.

What inspires me to teach?

My teaching provides a structured but largely unscripted space in which I am engaged with students in a way that cannot be experienced in any other context.  There is an energy and connection that my students and I experience in that moment which transforms us all.  Ideas are tested.  Rules of law and policy preferences are revealed, explored and measured. And knowledge is advanced in spontaneous and sometimes delightfully unexpected ways. When I see my students’ understanding of the material take flight, I am inspired and gratified.  For me there is just something magical about helping to open someone’s eyes to a new level of understanding and to know that they are ready to “take it from here” and grow as lawyers for the rest of their careers.

Why do lawyers matter?

Lawyers provide counseling to clients in an endless variety of important contexts and, when needed, they provide critical advocacy -- a voice -- for their clients when contentious disputes seem beyond amicable resolution. In my teaching, I use the case method (although not exclusively), but not just because I find this method to be effective for teaching doctrine and analytical skills. I use the case method for the narrative, for the story behind the dispute, to remind my students that each case is about real people who likely anguished over their legal conflict and ultimately sought resolution in the courts. In doing so, I am regularly reminding the students of their professional calling and the real clients whom they will soon be serving as practicing attorneys.  Along the way, as we humanize each controversy we examine, I challenge my students to serve their future clients and the courts with the highest possible ethical and moral standards.  Lawyers who serve their clients with that kind of understanding and ethical commitment serve us all. They are the glue for a civilized, ordered and just society.

Courses

Business Organizations, Business Principles, Comparative Corporate Governance, Contracts, Corporate Finance, Delaware Corporation Law, and Human Rights and Multinational Corporations

Publications

Publications on Selected Works

Publications on SSRN

 

Human Rights Compliance and Accountability for U.S. Multinational Enterprises: A Principled Step Forward after Sosa and Kiobel (forthcoming; draft available on SSRN)

What’s Left of Unocal?, 26 DEL. J. CORP. L. 947 (2001)

Great Expectations?  A Contract Law Analysis for Preclusive Corporate Lock-Ups, 21 CARDOZO L. REV. 1 (1999) (lead article). -- Analysis suggested in this article for resolving conflicts between contract and fiduciary duty claims was adopted and applied by the Delaware Court of Chancery in In re Del Monte Foods Co. Shareholders Litig., 25 A.3d 813 (Del. Ch. 2011) and in ACE Ltd. v. Capital Re Corp., 747 A.2d 95 (Del. Ch. 1999).

The Unimportance of Being Earnest: Paramount Rewrites the Rules for Enhanced Scrutiny in Corporate Takeovers, 46 HASTINGS L.J. 125 (1994)

Presentations

“Human Rights Compliance and Accountability for U.S. Multinational Enterprises,” presentation on Aug. 16, 2012 in Reykjavik, Iceland at the 26th Conference of the Nordic Sociological Association program entitled Trust and Social Change

“A Proposal for Human Rights Accountability for U.S. Based Multinational Enterprises,” presentation on July 8, 2011 in Oñati, Spain at the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law as part of a program entitled International Conference on the Social Economy: Corporate Responsibility, Private Property & Partnerships, Workers’ Rights and Cooperatives

“Corporate Governance in a Post-Enron World.” Washington, DC, June 25, 2002.  Presentation on corporate governance implications of Enron matter to Washington, DC area alumni of Widener University School of Law.