Ryan Meade
Editor-in-Chief
Director, Regulatory Compliance Studies at Loyola University Chicago School of Law
The academic year for 2018-2019 has kicked off at the Center for Compliance Studies. It promises to be a big year with even more robust blog activity planned, a symposium in February 2019 that will be one of the first academic looks at the role of compliance programs in the context of enterprise risk management initiatives, and Issue 3 of the Journal soon to be published. This year we have 37 law students involved in the Center’s activities through the Journal membership.
As an initial matter, we finished the last academic year on a strong note that saw a transformation of the blog into first-rate commentary on regulations, compliance, and risk across all industries. Inside Compliance was initially launched by law students who focused on health care compliance but in its second and third year, particularly last year in its third year, the commentary flowered to cover industries far beyond health care. Posts last year included regulatory commentary on banking, energy, athletics, higher education, the securities sector, as well as the broad implications from federal tax reform.
This year Inside Compliance is poised to be even more vigorous than last year. With 37 students as commentators and editors, we once again have almost 10% of the 2L and 3L JD students at Loyola. We will also have guest post from our online MJ and LLM students. Inside Compliance will begin a series of interviews of Loyola’s compliance faculty. The compliance faculty interviews will be conducted by Professor Chris Conway and Professor Ryan Whitney who both teach in the online program. They will be highlighting the diverse backgrounds and in-the-trenches experiences of our adjunct faculty who teach our MJ and LLM students.
We are working hard on the third issue of Loyola’s Journal of Regulatory Compliance. The issue will publish papers from the February 2018 compliance symposium which asked the question, “What is the Role of a Regulation that is Not Enforced?” The symposium produced six articles for the upcoming volume.
The Center will again be hosting a symposium. The third annual symposium on February 15, 2019 asks a further question in compliance studies, “What is the Future of Compliance in Enterprise Risk Management?” While legal and reputational risk have had to be managed by companies for as long as commercial enterprise has existed, the past two decades have seen parallel organized approaches to deal with regulatory liability and risk in general. Compliance programs and enterprise risk management programs have developed in separate siloes but there now appears to be a trend to merge the two under a general approach to managing risk. We are currently recruiting an exciting line-up of speakers with a mix of academics and practitioners. We will also be publishing a Call for Papers soon for two panels of short papers offered by scholars working in this emerging area. As far as we know, this will be the first academic conference specifically examining the intersection of compliance programs and enterprise risk management initiatives.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t also point out to readers some of Loyola’s activities which touch on regulatory compliance matters. The Wiet Life Science Law Scholars Conference will be held on September 7, 2018 and brings together scholars across the spectrum of life sciences law to exchange scholarship. Loyola’s Institute for Investor Protection will host a conference on September 14, 2018 entitled “Lehman 10 Years Later: Lessons Learned?” The event will be a retrospective look at the 2008 economic meltdown. The annual symposium hosted by Loyola’s Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy will be on November 10, 2018. The topic is “Serving the Needs of Medicaid Populations,” and will explore, among other topics, aspects of Medicaid expansion and the complexities of differences in how Medicaid programs are administered by the States.
The Center for Compliance Studies continues to enjoy a relationship with the Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association. The Center will be participating once again in SCCE’s Compliance & Ethics Institute in October (Las Vegas) and HCCA’s Compliance Institute in April (Boston) along with a variety of regional conferences.
The Center for Compliance Studies has been fortunate to enjoy the strong support of Loyola and its benefactors over the past year. But first and foremost what we are fortunate for is our students. When the compliance curriculum began for the JD, MJ, and LLM students it consisted of just a handful of offerings but has now grown to nearly 50 courses. So often courses are added at universities as the result of professors’ academic interests, but at Loyola the compliance curriculum has expanded from the demand of students for deeper exploration of regulatory compliance topics and an interest in emerging regulatory areas.
I want to thank and welcome our new Executive Board. Tierney Mason will serve as Managing Editor and has already pulled off a successful recruiting season for student sign-ups. She will be joined by an able executive crew of Hubert Shingleton, Sara Oakes, Richard Shepard and Marvin Morazan. I am lucky to have such a great executive team for the Journal and Inside Compliance.
Get ready for an exciting academic year and follow it here at Inside Compliance.