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A New Chapter in Business Law at McGill: Peer Zumbansen
In January 2021, McGill Law welcomed the inaugural incumbent of the Professorship in Business Law, Professor Peer Zumbansen. With his renowned expertise in private, transnational, and corporate law, Professor Zumbansen will play a leading role in defining and executing the Faculty’s overall vision for teaching and research in business law through its distinctive integrated approach.
Focus Law spoke with Professor Zumbansen about his passion for business law and his vision for the new role.
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Many important figures in corporate law and in business hold degrees from McGill Law. The Faculty’s new Professorship in Business Law, philanthropically funded for a five-year term, is a result of the collective efforts of some of these graduates to help foster the next generation of exceptional talent in their field. Beginning in 2018, several alumni rallied around a project to recruit a leading scholar in business law to McGill. “The appointment of Professor Zumbansen marks a milestone for the Faculty of Law. I look forward to his leadership in coordinating and expanding our efforts in this area and connecting our research and teaching more closely to those in practice,” said Dean Robert Leckey. Fundraising efforts to endow a Chair in Business Law in perpetuity are underway.
How did you become interested in business law? Why does it fascinate you?
As a law student in Frankfurt, Germany, I had the honour to study under the guidance of Rudolf Wiethölter. He challenged us to think about law in its socio-economic, historical and political contexts. He helped us mobilize terms such as “social” or “economic” law as subversive, critical tools, despite their uncomfortable fit with existing legal fields. In other words, both social and economic law could be used to question the hidden assumptions that sustained the allegedly clear dividing lines between established legal fields such as contract and tort law, or between labour and corporate law. Likewise, “social” and “economic” approaches undermined the purportedly self-explanatory rationality of distinguishing between public and private, and of associating the former with “the state” and the latter with “the market.” Business law bears similarities with these subversive formulas as it asks us to interrogate not only the relationship between business and law, but law’s aspirations for a capitalist world.
What are your goals as the Faculty’s inaugural Professor in Business Law?
My hope is to be part of a lively, collegial culture of continuous thought exchange, collaborative scholarship, curricular innovation and outreach activities that can build bridges between different business law camps, but also across a much wider range of legal practice and theory fields. New initiatives in Business Law could plant the seed for the creation of long-term engagements and collaborations between the Faculty and private practice, and also key government agencies and civil society actors in Quebec, Canada and abroad. At the heart of such collaborations lies the question of how to work together to better understand the historical trajectories of economic governance into the 21st century, and how to develop innovative conceptual frameworks for the future.
Qu’est-ce qui vous réjouit à la perspective de vivre à Montréal ?
Montréal — et McGill — occupent depuis longtemps une place unique parmi les endroits où je rêve vivre et travailler. J’espère étendre mes connaissances sur l’histoire de cette ville et de ses divers habitant.e.s, et interagir avec une grande variété de Montréalais.e.s. Je suis honoré de me joindre à une Faculté aussi accomplie en recherche critique à la portée transformatrice et mondiale. J’espère pouvoir contribuer à tisser de nouveaux liens entre la Faculté de droit et les autres départements mcgillois afin de travailler ensemble à rendre les études juridiques critiques, riches et mieux contextualisées.
Oh, et en espérant que le virus soit bientôt chose du passé, je me réjouis à la perspective de futures rencontres avec des musiciens et musiciennes du coin. Mes baguettes de batteur sont déjà sorties de ma valise!
In January 2021, McGill Law welcomed the inaugural incumbent of the Professorship in Business Law, Professor Peer Zumbansen. With his renowned expertise in private, transnational, and corporate law, Professor Zumbansen will play a leading role in defining and executing the Faculty’s overall vision for teaching and research in business law through its distinctive integrated approach.
Many important figures in corporate law and in business hold degrees from McGill Law. The Faculty’s new Professorship in Business Law, philanthropically funded for a five-year term, is a result of the collective efforts of some of these graduates to help foster the next generation of exceptional talent in their field. Beginning in 2018, several alumni rallied around a project to recruit a leading scholar in business law to McGill. “The appointment of Professor Zumbansen marks a milestone for the Faculty of Law. I look forward to his leadership in coordinating and expanding our efforts in this area and connecting our research and teaching more closely to those in practice,” said Dean Robert Leckey. Fundraising efforts to endow a Chair in Business Law in perpetuity are underway.
Focus Law spoke with Professor Zumbansen about his passion for business law and his vision for the new role.
