The ASIL Anti-Corruption Workshop: On the virtues of bridging the theory-practice divide

As publicized earlier on the FCPA Blog. the Anti-Corruption Interest Group of the American Society of International Law held its inaugural workshop last Friday and Saturday at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business. It was a huge success, and may well become an annual affair.

Thanks to the hearty response of the FCPA Blog’s readership, we received an overwhelming number of paper submissions, and chose 38. They bridged many divides both geographic and conceptual. Besides the U.S. proposals, we accepted papers from Italy and India. So too did we have half a dozen proposals from Iran. Neither I nor my co-chair, Phil Nichols, had every seen that before; it would appear that Iran is really pushing hard to foster international intellectual exchange in this, a new era in the country’s modern history.

But best of all, we had presenters from all points on the academy-practice spectrum: full-time academics, full-time practitioners, and many folks in between. We informed each other’s perspectives and exchanged ideas heartily; the cross-fertilization was most evident.

The genius of ASIL is its ability to bring academics and practitioners around a common table. At our interest group’s workshop, we saw the fruits of this approach in abundance.

Ultimately, the ASIL Anti-Corruption Interest Group is a microcosm of the FCPA Blog’s readership. How fortunate, for all of us.

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Andy Spalding is a Senior Editor of the FCPA Blog and Associate Professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.