Read Ann Lipton’s Canceled Paper

Professor Ann Lipton, of Tulane Law School, wrote a paper, Capital Discrimination, which was accepted for publication in the Houston Law Review and posted to SSRN. As Ann explains over at the Business Law Prof Blog:

[T]he paper explores the problem of gender discrimination against women as business owners and capital providers, and proposes changes to both statutory law and common law fiduciary duties in order to address gender-based oppression in business.

The paper itself describes several business law cases from different jurisdictions, including Shawe v. Elting, a matter very familiar to business lawyers, and which involved an acrimonious dispute in the Delaware courts.  Just before Christmas, an attorney representing Philip Shawe sent this cease and desist letter to SSRN, demanding that the paper be removed from that site as defamatory. 

On New Year’s Day, SSRN removed the paper in response to Shawe’s letter.  After that, Houston Law Review could no longer assure me that the article would run in its journal, and stated that they would not preclude me from submitting the paper for publication elsewhere.   

Tulane has sent a response letter to SSRN noting that the article’s factual assertions are drawn from publicly available court opinions and filings and the author’s conclusions are nondefamatory statements of personal opinion.

 The full paper is available at this link. 

Update: 

 

And would be great if @SSRN laid out some guidance on their standards and how they plan to review such claims going forward https://t.co/tSEwgMWQFi

— Kim Krawiec (@KimKrawiec) February 14, 2022

Update 2: This is good news!

Comments

[Steven Lubet]

Thanks for posting this, Kim. It is significant that Tulane's GC has backed up Prof. Lipton. Many universities, I fear, would not get involved.

[Kimberly Krawiec]

Yes, agreed. Indeed, there are a few recent cases (not involving SSRN) where the University did *not* support the faculty member -- thinking of U of O and the Merle Weiner case, which was not so long ago.

[Steven Lubet]

I am aware of a sociology professor who got sucked into some satellite litigation involving a publication, trying to keep his sources confidential. His university counsel was sympathetic, but provided no help. He had to retain private counsel.

[Dave Garrow]

This *does* speak very well of Tulane's GC office...