At the Weinberg Center’s 25th Anniversary Gala, SEC Chair Paul Atkins invited Delaware to consider whether its state corporation law authorizes advisory shareholder proposals on non-governance topics—or whether they might properly be excluded under the SEC’s shareholder proposal rule. Chair Atkins warned that the rule has been stretched beyond its valid bounds by activists using it for matters other than corporate governance. Expressing concern that such uses deter companies from going or staying public, the SEC is revisiting its shareholder proposal rule.
The shareholder proposal rule, a longstanding feature of the federal proxy system, has rarely intersected with state corporation law, leaving many Delaware practitioners unfamiliar with its operation or implications. Yet this new focus on the intersection between federal rule and state law implicates Delaware’s corporate franchise, an important topic that the State of Delaware has recently asked the University of Delaware’s Institute for Public Administration (IPA) to study. It is therefore timely to consider both the shareholder proposal rule and its significance in the context of Delaware’s corporate franchise.
To promote informed discussion over coming months, the Weinberg Center, in partnership with IPA, will convene a program of two panels: one to explain the shareholder proposal rule itself and another to put its significance in the context of Delaware’s corporate franchise.
Register Today
The John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance and the Department of Finance at the Lerner College of Business & Economics, University of Delaware, in collaboration with the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI), will host an in-person academic symposium on Friday, March 6, 2026. We welcome all submissions broadly related to corporate governance. Up to three papers included in the symposium will be selected to each receive the 2026 John L. Weinberg/IRRCi Research Paper Award and a $10,000 prize. For past symposium programs and award winners, please visit the research paper competition webpage.
The deadline for paper submissions is midnight, Eastern Standard Time, November 16, 2025. There is a non-refundable submission fee of $100 per paper. Please pay the submission fee by visiting the registration webpage. (If the link does not work, please copy and paste this link in your browser.) Please submit your papers to Nicole Rich at Weinberg-corp-gov@udel.edu, together with a copy of your payment receipt.
This research competition is the successor to the IRRCi Investor Research Paper Award, which had become a prominent award garnering significant attention amongst the investment community, academia and policymakers. The John L. Weinberg/IRRCi Research Paper Award, as its predecessor did, highlights innovative research.
Papers should be submitted using the following guidelines. Failure to comply with these guidelines may disqualify papers.
General inquiries regarding the competition or the Symposium should be directed to Nicole Rich at Weinberg-corp-gov@udel.edu.
Submit Your Paper TodayPlease note that the selection of winners/finalists, if any, is at the sole discretion of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. The Weinberg Center fully anticipates awarding up to three $10,000 prizes but reserves the right to select no papers as winners in the event papers submitted do not meet the above guidelines and/or the Center does not believe any paper is worthy of the award.
