David A. Westbrook
Professor, Floyd H. and Hilda Hurst Faculty Scholar
B.A., Emory University, 1988
J.D., Harvard University, 1992
University at Buffalo Law School
The State University of New York
521 O'Brian
Hall, North Campus
Buffalo, NY 14260-1100
Phone:(716) 645-2490
Faculty Assistant:
Barbara Kennedy, 507 O'Brian Hall, Phone: (716) 645-2167
Biography:
David A. Westbrook teaches on business and international topics, including the basic courses in corporations and international law.
Westbrook's scholarly writing generally tracks his teaching interests. Whether practical, political, or theoretical in intention, Westbrook's scholarship is grounded by his considerable experience in both European and American governments, private legal practices, and academies. The core of his scholarship, however, is critical and quite theoretical. In such works, the underlying difficulty may be understood as the lack of an adequate political language, i.e., how do we meet our need for a political economy, a way to explain to ourselves how we live together now, without undue reliance on the intellectual or political apparatus of the modernity we have abandoned?
Selected Publications:
(For a complete list of publications, see Professional Bibliography)
Books
Deploying Ourselves: Islamist Violence, Globalization and the Responsible Projection of the U.S. Force (forthcoming Paradigm Publishers 2010)
After the Crisis: Rethinking Our Capital Markets (Paradigm Publishers 2009)
Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters (University of Chicago Press 2008).
Between Citizen and State: An Introduction to the Corporation (Paradigm 2007).
City of Gold: An Apology for Global Capitalism in a Time of Discontent (Routledge 2003).
Selected Articles, Book Chapters, and Essays
Notes Toward a Theory of the Executive Class, 55 Buffalo Law Review 1047 (2007).
Strategic Consequences of Radical Islamic Neofundamentalism 51 Orbis 461-477 (Summer 2007).
Theorizing the Diffusion of Law: Conceptual Difficulties, Unstable Imaginations, and the Effort to Think Gracefully Nonetheless 47 Harvard International Law Journal (2006).
America the Comfortable First Things no.160 (March 2006)
The Globalization of American Law Theory, Culture and Society, Special issue on Problematizing Global Knowledge, vol. 23.
Rassurante Amérique: Tocqueville revue par Bernard-Henri Lévy, Esprit (November 2005) (6 trans. Alice Béja; written as America the Comfortable).
Introduction, First Annual Essay Issue of the Buffalo Law Review 52 Buffalo Law Review 629 (2004).
Corporation Law After Enron: the Possibility of a Capitalist Reimagination 92 Georgetown Law Journal 61 (2003) (article).
The Hope for Sustainable Development: Visions of History and the Pragmatism of Environmentalists in Jim Chen, Ed., The Jurisdynamics of Environmental Protection (Environmental Law Institute 2004) (book chapter).
Le "noble mensonge" de l'Amérique après le 11 septembre [written as Constituting a Nation, Making a Home, After September 11th], 116 La Revue Nouvelle no. 3, p. 89 (2003) (Belgium) (essay).
Law Through War 48 Buffalo Law Review 299 (2000) (article length essay).
Confronting Asymmetry: Global Financial Markets and National Regulation 1 International Finance, 339 (1998) (with Brandon Becker) (review essay).
Liberal Environmental Jurisprudence 27 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 619 (1994), jury selected as one of the best environmental articles of the year and reprinted in 26 Land Use & Environmental Law Review 267 (1995) (article).
Islamic International Law and Public International Law: Separate Expressions of World Order 33 Virginia Journal of Inational Law 819 (1993) (article).
Selected Presentations
Roundtable on the European Response to the Financial Crisis, Bureau of European Policy Advisers, Commission of the European Communities, Brussels, Belgium, September 18, 2009.
"Transactional Teaching and Conversational Scholarship," (plenary address) Workshop on Transactional Law, American Association of Law Schools Mid-Year Meeting, Long Beach, California, June 11, 2009.
"Tragedy, Law, and Rethinking Our Financial Markets," Tobin Project Conference, Government & Markets: Ferment in the Face of Crisis, White Oak, Florida, April 24, 2009.
"Temptations of Modern Finance: A Critical Yet Sympathetic Analysis of Recent US Financial Policy," China Banking Regulatory Commission, Beijing, February 23, 2009; Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Beijing, February 23, 2009; U.S. Consulate, Shanghai, Public Affairs Section, March 2, 2009.
"Rethinking Our Financial Markets," Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, February 24, 2009; Renmin University of China, February 24, 2009; Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, Dalian, February 25, 2009; Shanghai Institute for International Studies, February 26, 2009; Fudan University, Shanghai, February 27, 2009; China-European International Business School, Shanghai, February 27, 2009; U.S. Consulate, Shanghai, Public Affairs Section, March 2, 2009; Zhongshan (Sun Yat Sen) University, Guangzhou, March 3, 2009; China Development Institute, Shenzhen, March 4, 2009; American Chamber of Commerce, Shenzhen, March 4, 2009; Southwest University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, March 5, 2009; Sichuan Academy of Social Science, Chengdu, March 6, 2009.
Roundtable Discussions on Financial Crisis: President, Dalian Commodities Exchange, February 25, 2009; leaders of various financial institutions, Shenzhen, March 4, 2009.
"Legal Safeguards for Stock Markets: Sarbanes-Oxley, the Credit Crisis, and Limitations on Transparency," (1) Damasio Prep School for Magistrates and Prosecutors Candidates, August 5, 2008; (2) Brazilian Bar – Chapter Sao Paulo, August 5, 2008; (3) Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) Law School (EDESP), August 6, 2008; (4) Public Diplomacy School (ESD), August 6, 2008. All supported by a U.S. Speaker and Specialist Grant from the U.S. Department of State.
"Corporation Law as Theater," HEC, Paris, France, March 13, 2008.
"Deploying Ourselves: Islamist Violence, Globalization, and the Responsible Projection of U.S. Force," NATO, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, Mons, Belgium, March 12, 2008.
"Corporate Social Responsibility," Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, March 11, 2008.
"Holding Positions in a Time of Targeted Killing," talk given at the University of California at Irvine for the University of California Humanities Research Institute and the Center for Ethnography, May 18, 2007, and for faculty of the James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona, May 22, 2007.
"Refunctioning Ethnography as One Kind of Solution: Bureaucracies, Conversations, and Possibilities for Intellectual Politics," Department of Anthropology & School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, December 1, 2006.
"Bin Laden's War: Strategic Consequences of Radical Neofundamentalism," Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, Mons, Belgium, November 14, 2006.
"An Introduction to City of Gold: An Apology for Global Capitalism in a Time of Discontent," Conference on Critical World Problems, World Association of International Studies, Stanford University, July 30, 2006.
"The Time of Faith: Contemporary Muslims, Secularists, and Anxieties over the Nature of History," talk at the conference "Does Islam Need a Reformulation to be Compatible with the West?" Columbia University, March 29, 2006, sponsored by the Alliance Program (Columbia University; Ecole Polytechnique; Sciences Po; Universite Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne) and The Middle East Institute, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.
"Theorizing the Diffusion of Law: Conceptual Difficulties, Unstable Imaginations, and the Effort to Think Gracefully Nonetheless," Keynote Address to International Law Journal Symposium, "The Diffusion of Law in the 21st Century," Harvard Law School, March 4, 2006; Baldy Center Work in Progress, UB Law School, February 13, 2006.
"True Politics: Culture, Law, and the Difficulty of Building an Informed Society," panel presentation at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society, Tunis, November 17, 2005.
"Disclosure, Bureaucratization, and the Fall of Giants," talk given at the American Center (U.S. Department of State), Brussels, Belgium, May 10, 2004, and at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Private Law, Hamburg, Germany, May 13, 2004.
"Despots and Offshore Assets: Possible Responses," chaired panel at ASIL 2000: International Law in Ferment, Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law, Washington, D.C. April 5-8, 2000.
"Is the U.N. Obsolete?" presentation at the conference International Law Plus or Minus Fifty Years: A Colloquium on the Occasion of Abram Chayes' Fiftieth Law School Reunion, Harvard Law School, April 22-24, 1999.
