Seasoned Leadership

For Clients. For the Profession.

The American College of Governance Counsel is a professional, educational, and honorary association of lawyers widely recognized for their achievements in the field of governance.  The mission of the College is to promote a high level of professional standards among governance lawyers along with a better understanding and broader adoption of best practices within business organizations.

Through its programs, the College explores the major governance issues facing business enterprises, including challenges to traditional models of governance, risk management, shareholder engagement, and an increasingly complex regulatory and enforcement environment.

ESG and the First Amendment

The continuing dispute between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Disney Corporation spotlights the application of commercial speech protections under the First Amendment to ESG considerations. There’s an interesting history here, involving the SEC’s conflict mineral disclosure rule of about 10 years ago, which was successfully challenged on First Amendment grounds (see here). There are also three recent academic articles that provide interesting perspectives on the issues, which can be accessed through the Current Resources section of our website.

Call for Papers

The Inaugural James Cheek Best Article Award

The Corporate Governance Counsel: Professional Responsibility and Ethics

Due date: January 1, 2024

The American College of Governance Counsel (ACGC) is pleased to announce the inaugural James H. Cheek III Award for the Best Article on the professional responsibilities of counsel in the corporate governance area.

The Award’s aim is to encourage the pursuit of excellence in corporate governance lawyering and dedication to professionalism, ethics, and civility through the promotion of scholarship in this area. We invite publishable articles from scholars and practitioners, including accepted papers that have not been published yet.

ACGC is a professional, educational, and honorary association of lawyers widely-recognized for their achievements in the field of corporate governance. ACGC’s mission is to promote a high level of professional standards among corporate governance lawyers, along with a better understanding and broader adoption of best practices within business organizations.

Jim Cheek, who passed away in August 2021, was a legendary lawyer in the areas of corporate governance, corporate and securities law, and professional responsibility. He was a member of Bass, Berry & Sims for fifty years, and was one of ACGC’s ten founding trustees.

The Award Committee will review papers submitted by authors or nominated by peers. For the initial award, the Committee will consider articles substantially completed after October 1, 2022 and prior to December 31, 2023. The Committee will select the best article in the professional responsibility area. The winner will receive a physical award and $2,500. Additionally, the winner will be invited to present and discuss the article at an ACGC program.

Papers should be emailed to info@amgovcollege.org by January 1, 2024. Questions and inquiries should be emailed to the Competition Committee at info@amgovcollege.org.

Please pass this Call for Papers along to any colleagues or others who may be interested in submitting or nominating papers.