Todd Zywicki

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Todd J. Zywicki (b. 1966) is a law professor at George Mason University School of Law, teaching in the areas of bankruptcy and contracts, where he has taught since 1998. He taught previously at the Mississippi College School of Law, where he had held a faculty position from 1996-98. Zywicki was a Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center for the 2004-05 academic year and a Visiting Professor at Boston College in 2002. During the 2003-04 academic year, he served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, in which capacity he testified before the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection regarding reform issues.

Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry Edwin 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 law. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia (1993), where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics.

Zywicki has been criticized for his support of the controversial Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. [1] One judge faced with interpreting a poorly worded section of the law stated that section was "one of many examples of poor drafting in the new bankruptcy law, which Professor Todd Zywicki assured the Senate Judiciary Committee was 'fine as it is,' adding, 'There is no word that I would change in this particular piece of legislation.'” In re Kane, 336 B.R. 477 (Bkrtcy. D. Nev. 2006). Zywicki says the quote was taken out of context. He says his comment referred to whether the bill had become obsolete after having been drafted eight years earlier, and not to whether it had technical glitches.

Zywicki is the author of more than 50 articles in leading law reviews and economics journals. He is a frequent commentator in the print and broadcast media, and a regular contributor to The Volokh Conspiracy blog.

Zywicki attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1988. At Dartmouth, he was a member of Zeta Psi Fraternity. He was elected to the Board of Trustees of the College in 2005.

[edit] Education

• A.B., Dartmouth College
• M.A., Clemson University (Economics)
• J.D., University of Virginia

[edit] External links

• Professor Zywicki's Home Page at the George Mason Law School.
• More on Competition, Contracts and Regulation (Spanish) New Media, UFM

[edit] Publications and media

• Farnsworth, Elizabeth, Todd Zywicki, and Karen Gross. "Going for Broke." NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Interview transcript. 17 May 1999. URL accessed 15 August 2006.
• Ifill, Gwen, Todd Zywicki, and Travis Plunkett. "New Bankruptcy Law. NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Interview transcript. 17 October 2005. URL accessed 15 August 2006.
• Zywicki, Todd. "Bankrupt Criticisms: The bankruptcy bill deserves to pass." National Review Online. 15 March 2005. URL accessed 15 August 2006.
• --. "The Economics of Credit Cards." Working paper. George Mason University School of Law, 2000. URL accessed 15 August 2006.
• --. "The Nature of the State and the State of Nature: A Comment on Grady & McGuire's The Nature of Constitutions. Working paper. George Mason University School of Law, 2000. URL accessed 15 August 2006.
• --, ed. The Rule of Law, Freedom, and Prosperity. Sup. Ct. Econ. Rev. Vol. 10. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. ISBN 0-226-99962-9.