Ross Parsons Centre Law and Business seminar | Social enterprise law: A multijurisdictional comparative review

In-person event

This 24-nation review of social enterprise law analyzes data developed by a team of academics and practitioners with deep expertise regarding jurisdictions on six continents. Each responded to the authors’ detailed questionnaire inquiring into the relevant jurisdiction’s legal treatment of entities using business methods to achieve social good. After first identifying the key role of political, cultural and legal baselines in determining the space for and legal treatment of social enterprises, the paper explores the myriad specialized forms and certifications that have been developed to identify firms around the world as social enterprises.

Legal forms are offered exclusively by governments and relevant to a single jurisdiction, while certifications may or may not be public or jurisdiction-specific. Comparing these tools offers guidance to policymakers keen to continue evolving specialized social enterprise forms and certifications across jurisdictions. It also reveals how these identifiers for social enterprise are being used to incentivize the pursuit of social good using business methods. The assurances of trustworthiness provided by distribution constraints and regulatory oversight appear critical to support public subsidization or privileging of social enterprise. Without these protections in place, public incentives for social enterprise are largely absent

About the speaker

Dana Brakman Reiser holds a chair as Centennial Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, where she also served as Vice Dean. She teaches courses in Corporations, Nonprofit Law, Social Enterprise, Property, and Trusts and Estates. A globally recognized expert in the law at the intersection of business and charity, her work on the law of social enterprises – firms that pursue profits for owners and social good – defined the field. She has also written extensively on law and finance for philanthropic organizations and on sustainable investing.

She is a member of the American Law Institute and was an Associate Reporter for its project on the Principles of the Law of Nonprofit Organizations, as well as a past-Chair of the Section on Nonprofit and Philanthropy Law of the American Association of Law Schools and a former member of the executive board of its Section on Business Law. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School.

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Monday 31 July, 2023

Time: 1-2pm

Venue: The University of Sydney Law School, Common Room, Level 4, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown

CPD points: 1

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This event is proudly presented by the Ross Parsons Centre at the University of Sydney Law School.