Levin College of Law
Welcome to UF LAW

Cathy Hwang

Visiting Professor of Law

Expertise

Business & Corporate Law  • Contracts  • Corporate Governance  • Corporations  • Mergers & Acquisitions  • Securities Regulation  • Transactional Law & Practice  • 

About

Cathy Hwang is visiting at the law school beginning in the fall semester of 2023. She has been a member of law faculty of the University of Virginia School of Law since 2020. From 2022-23, she was the director of the John W. Glynn Jr. Law & Business Program. Her research and teaching focus on business law, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate contracts and corporate governance.

Four of her articles have been voted by business law professors as among the top 10 corporate and securities law articles of the year. Her work has been published in Columbia Law Review, California Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Northwestern University Law Review, among others.

Prior to joining the Virginia faculty, Hwang was on the faculty of the University of Utah, where she received the University Early Career Teaching Award and the College of Law’s Early Career Faculty Award. She has also served as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and was an academic fellow at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance, a joint initiative of Stanford Law School and the Graduate School of Business. In 2022, she was appointed a research member of ECGI.

Hwang received her undergraduate degree in economics and international relations from Pomona College and her J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, where she served as the managing editor of the Chicago Journal of International Law. After law school, she was a mergers and acquisitions attorney at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom in New York.

Education

J.D. University of Chicago Law School

B.A. Pomona College

Publications

  • National Security Creep in Corporate Transactions, 123 Columbia Law Review 549–614 (2023) (with Kristen Eichensehr).
  • Collaborative Intent, 108 Virginia Law Review 657–708 (2022).
  • Contractual Depth, 106 Minnesota Law Review 1267–1322 (2022) (with Matthew Jennejohn).
  • Comment on The Limits of Public Contract Law, 85 Law and Contemporary Problems 73–75 (2022).
  • Cleaning Corporate Governance, 170 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1–70 (2021) (with Jens Frankenreiter, Yaron Nili & Eric L. Talley).
  • The Social Cost of Contract, 121 Columbia Law Review 979–1016 (2021) (with David A. Hoffman).
  • Shadow Governance, 108 California Law Review 1097–1146 (2020) (with Yaron Nili).
  • Shareholder-Driven Stakeholderism, University of Chicago Law Review Online (2020) (with Yaron Nili).
  • Value Creation by Transactional Associates, 88 Fordham Law Review 1649–1663 (2020).
  • The New Research on Contractual Complexity, 14 Capital Markets Law Journal 381–393 (2019) (with Matthew Jennejohn).
  • Faux Contracts, 105 Virginia Law Review 1025–1078 (2019).
  • Deal Momentum, 65 UCLA Law Review 376–425 (2018).
  • Deal Structure, 113 Northwestern University Law Review 279–330 (2018) (with Matthew Jennejohn).
  • Unbundled Bargains: Multi-agreement Dealmaking in Complex Mergers and Acquisitions, 164 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1403–1451 (2016).
  • Online Essay: The Value of Uncertainty, 110 Northwestern University Law Review Online 19–31 (2015) (with Benjamin P. Edwards).
  • The New Corporate Migration: Tax Diversion Through Inversion, 80 Brooklyn Law Review 807–856 (2015).
  • The Value of Uncertainty, 110 Northwestern University Law Review 283–298 (2015) (with Benjamin P. Edwards).

University of Florida Levin College of Law
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PO Box 117620
Gainesville, FL 32611
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The Florida Constitutional Law Endowment in memory of Justice Ben F. Overton was created by Judge Karen Miller in 2013. This fund supports lectures and presentations by Justices of the Florida Supreme Court at the Fredric G. Levin College of Law.

HISTORY

Justice Overton, who earned his B.S. in 1951 and his Juris Doctor in 1952 from the University of Florida, was the first merit appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Throughout his career he was active in legal education and served as an Adjunct Professor at the Levin College of Law through December 2012, the month of his death. Although he resided at Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, a continuing care retirement community developed in cooperation with UF, he also considered the Florida Supreme Court “home.” Among the high points of his later years was hosting Justices of the Florida Supreme Court in Gainesville and taking his class to Tallahassee to hear oral arguments at the Florida Supreme Court.
Judge Miller, who earned her B.S. cum laude from New York University in 1974 and her Juris Doctor from New York Law School in 1977, served as Chief Administrative Law Judge of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, New York City’s business regulatory agency, before she retired to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. Having accompanied Justice Overton on his excursions to Tallahassee and joined him in welcoming guests to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, she created the endowment in memory of Justice Overton to ensure that the Levin College of Law continues to have the funding necessary to continue and enhance the interaction between its students and the Florida Supreme Court.

 

Judge Miller remembered the event that motivated the endowment.

 

Prior to a dinner at the home of Dean Robert Jerry and Lisa Jerry shortly after Justice Overton’s death, Justice Barbara Pariente and I were discussing a suitable memorial. Justice Pariente, who had been Justice Overton’s colleague on the Florida Supreme Court and who understood the importance to him of the interaction between his students and the Court, suggested the outline of what has become the Overton lectures. Dean Jerry, who has since retired, as has Dean Emeritus Jon Mills, who assumed responsibility for implementing the Overton lectures, were very supportive from the beginning. Since Dean Mills’ retirement, Professor Timothy McClendon, who assisted both Justice Overton and Dean Mills teaching Florida Constitutional Law and who co-authored the recent Florida Constitutional Law casebook, has continued the Overton lectures with the support of Interim Dean Merritt McAlister and CGR director, Professor Danaya Wright.

Justice Overton was a devoted jurist, educator, and ethical leader of the Florida legal profession. The Overton Lecture Series brings Florida Supreme Court Justices to the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, and serves to introduce students to the inner workings of the Court. CGR and the students of the College of Law extend our deepest gratitude to Judge Karen Miller for making the Overton Lectures possible in perpetuity.

You can watch an interview for the Florida Historical Society by Mary Adkins, professor emeritus of the UF Levin College of Law, with Justice Overton here.

Justice Overton was also interviewed for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Project and a transcript of his interview is available at the Smathers Library, and here.
Justice Overton sat on the Constitution Revision Commission of 1977-78 that proposed a right to privacy in the Florida Constitution. Although it failed as part of the Constitution Revision Commission recommendations, it passed in 1980 when proposed by the legislature. The bill was co-sponsored by our very own Jon Mills. The privacy provision prevailed by greater than 60%. Justice Overton then wrote a concurrence in a critical reproductive rights case in 1989 affirming that the privacy provision of the Florida Constitution included the right to obtain an abortion. That decision was overruled in Planned Parenthood of SW and Central Florida v. Florida. You can read about the role of Justice Overton, Jon Mills – director emeritus of CGR, and the history of the 1989 case here.