George Mason School of Law

Professor Todd J. Zywicki

TODD J. ZYWICKI is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law and Senior Fellow of the James Buchanan Center, Program on Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, at George Mason University.  He is currently (with Ilya Somin) Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review.  From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission.  He teaches in the area of Bankruptcy, Contracts, Commercial Law, Business Associations, Law & Economics, and Public Choice and the Law.  During the Fall 2007 semester Professor Zywicki will be a Visiting Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University Law School.  He has also taught at Georgetown Law Center, Boston College Law School and Mississippi College School of Law and is a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy.  He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala.  Professor Zywicki also served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on "Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System."

Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics.   Professor Zywicki also received an M.A. in Economics from Clemson University and an A.B. cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.

Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 60 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals.  He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network, both All Time and during the Past 12 Months.  He served as the Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2001-02.  He has testified several times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Nightline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show.  He is a contributor to the popular legal weblog The Volokh Conspiracy.  Professor Zywicki is a member of the Governing Board and the Advisory Council for the Financial Services Research Program at George Washington University School of Business, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, and the Program Advisory Board of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment.  He is currently the Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for the following organizations: The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation’s “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois.  In 2005 he was elected an Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees.

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