Description

Organizations and legal entities are traditionally conceived as perpetual—designed to last forever. Yet a striking alternative has emerged across the business, nonprofit, and government sectors: Legal entities intentionally designed to operate for a limited period and then conclude their work. Examples include venture capital and private equity funds, spend-down foundations, sunset agencies, and Focused Research Organizations.

This talk will introduce the concept of Temporal Governance—the use of organizational lifespan as a tool of institutional design. It examines the full landscape of organizational models, from perpetual institutions to time-limited ones, analysing the comparative strengths of each. While finite duration can reduce agency costs, enhance mission fidelity, and ease political constraints around termination, perpetual structures offer advantages for long-term investment and continuity. In brief: organizational duration is a critical yet underappreciated dimension of governance—one that operates across legal domains and has profound implications for institutional design.

SPEAKER BIO

Andrew A. Schwartz is the Laurence W. DeMuth Chair of Business Law at the University of Colorado. He has also served as visiting professor at the University of Auckland and the University of Haifa, and currently serves in that role at NUS Law.

A member of the American Law Institute, Professor Schwartz is the author of one book, Investment Crowdfunding, published by Oxford University Press, as well as more than fifty scholarly works. His articles have appeared in leading venues including the UCLA Law Review, the Yale Journal on Regulation, and the New Zealand Law Review. He has won numerous awards for his scholarship, and his research is regularly cited by courts and commentators around the world.

Professor Schwartz is a graduate of Brown University and Columbia Law School, where he served on the Columbia Law Review and earned top honors every year. Following law school, he clerked on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as well as the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, and also practiced corporate law in New York at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.