Todd Zywicki

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Todd J. Zywicki (b. 1966) is an American 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 supports the 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 [2] 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. In December 2007, Zywicki was censured by the Dartmouth College Alumni Council after he, on October 27, 2007, referred to the recently deceased Dartmouth President James O. Freedman as "a truly evil man." [3] Zywicki has said that his characterization of Freedman was drawn from long-standing Dartmouth Professor Jeffrey Hart, who based his term on Freedman's well-documented behavior as president. The Alumni Council, a self-perpetuating unelected body whose condemnation was based out out-of-context excerpts from Zywicki's remarks, subsequently was condemned by the democratically-elected leaders of the Dartmouth Association of Alumni. The Executive Committee of the Alumni Association wrote that it "condemns the Alumni Council's censure of one Trustee's recent remarks as reflecting selective outrage out of political motivation, by an organization whose members simultaneously have, in their official capacity, issued condemnations of others in the Dartmouth Community that mirror the stridency of the remarks they condemn." Zywicki's remarks drew widespread praise from leading commentators on higher education, including John Leo, John J. Miller, Greg Lukianoff, Steve Balch, Jane Shaw, and Jay Scanlin, who praised his willingness to speak out on important issues of higher education. Leo wrote, "In his speech, Zywicki argued that Freedman stood for 'political correctness in all forms -speech codes, censorship, the whole multicultural apparatus.' Yes, he did. And it's useful for a Dartmouth trustee to say so plainly." Miller added, "Dartmouth is lucky to have a trustee such as Zywicki—a man who is willing to discuss Dartmouth's challenges in public, rather than clam up about them as if they don't exist. Yes-men trustees sit silent as colleges and universities embarrass and destroy themselves, such as when Harvard ousted Larry Summers and Duke cracked down on its lacrosse team." In addition, the Alumni Council defied the will of the overwhelming majority of Dartmouth alumni by publicly supporting the Dartmouth Board of Trustee's "Board-packing" plan imposed during 2007.

Contents

[edit] Education

[edit] References

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  2. ^ says
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[edit] Publications and media