Michael I. Krauss
Michael Ian Krauss (born April 21, 1951) is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law. Krauss is an expert on tort law, products liability, jurisprudence and legal ethics and writes a Torts and Legal Ethics column for Forbes. He won George Mason University's "Teacher of the Year" award the first year it was attributed; the award may not be won twice by the same professor.
Born in New York City and raised in Canada, Krauss holds a B.A. from Carleton University, an LL.B. from l'Université de Sherbrooke, and an LL.M. from the Yale Law School. He was hired as clerk to the Hon. Louis-Philippe Pigeon of Canada's Supreme Court. Krauss went on to practice corporate law in Québec City, and in 1983, he completed his doctoral residency as Columbia University's Law and Economics Fellow. He has taught at law schools in French Canada, English Canada, the United States, France, Israel and Guatemala.
Krauss was elected to the American Law Institute in 2008 and is a member of the Board of Governors of the National Association of Scholars. Krauss has served as a member of the Legal Education Task Force of the Virginia State Bar since 2011 and was a member of the Maryland State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission for Civil Rights from 2011 to 2013. He has also served as a Commissioner for Québec's Human Rights Commission.
From 2011 to 2012, Krauss was Of Counsel to the Clearspire Law Firm, a pathbreaking effort to create a new and more ethical paradigm of legal practice.[1]
Krauss is faculty advisor to George Mason's Federalist Society chapter, and lectures frequently at Federalist Society chapters across the country. During the Spring semester of 2010, Krauss was on leave at the University of Haifa, Princeton University (as a James Madison Program Fellow) and Panthéon-Assas University teaching tort theory and completing a treatise on Products Liability.
He has published widely in law reviews, magazines and newspapers. These publications include Alternate Dispute Financing and Legal Ethics: Free the Lawyers!, 33 MISSISSIPPI COLLEGE OF LAW REVIEW (2014) (forthcoming); A Medical Malpractice Toolkit, 2 JOURNAL OF LAW (1 J. LEGAL METRICS) 349 (2012); “Retributive Damages" and the Death of Private Ordering, 158 U. PA. L. REV. PENNUMBRA 167 (2010); Rule of Law, 7 INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES (2nd Ed. 2008); Palsgraf: The Rest of the Story, 9 GREEN BAG 2d 299 (2006); and David Hoffman of Baltimore: A Profile in Courage, HERITAGE FOUNDATION POLICY REVIEW, (July/August 1996). And his op-eds have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Investor's Business Daily, The Christian Science Monitor, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Times, The Tulsa Journal, The Kansas City Star, La Presse (Montreal), Montreal Gazette, Le Devoir (Montreal), Globe and Mail (Toronto), Japan Times, Perfiles Liberales (Mexico), El Caribe (Dominican Republic), El Comercio (Peru), El Mercurio (Chile), Diario Hoy (Ecuador), El Universal (Venezuela), El Panama America (Panama), Prensa Libre (Guatemala), and El Tiempo (Colombia).
Krauss has also authored four books, including the first edition and forthcoming second edition of Principles of Products Liability and the first and second editions of Legal Ethics in a Nutshell (co-authored). He speaks to over a dozen student groups and academic conferences, across the nation, each year. In 2012, for example, Krauss gave the Bouton Law Lecture at Princeton University, entitled “A Marine’s Honor: The Supreme Court From Snyder To Alvarez."
Krauss resides in Potomac, Maryland with his wife, Cynthia Conner, a vice president of the American Health Lawyers Association. They are the parents of Rebecca Taibleson (a 2005 graduate of Yale College, a 2010 graduate of Yale Law School and from 2011 to 2012 a clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court)[2] and Joshua Krauss (a 2008 Graduate of the University of Maryland and currently a Captain in the United States Marine Corps). Krauss's younger brother, Lawrence, is Professor of Physics at Arizona State University. Krauss is a member of the Board of Directors of Ohr Kodesh Congregation in Chevy Chase, Maryland.