Rate My Professor Todd Zywicki

Todd J. Zywicki is the George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. His areas of expertise include bankruptcy, commercial law, consumer financial protection, consumer protection law, contracts, law and economics, and public choice and law. He earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1993, where he served as executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics; M.A. in Economics from Clemson University in 1990; and A.B. cum laude with high honors in Government from Dartmouth College in 1988. Zywicki's career began with a clerkship for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1993 to 1994, followed by practice as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, focusing on bankruptcy and commercial law from 1994 to 1996. He taught as an assistant professor at Mississippi College School of Law from 1996 to 1998 and held visiting professorships at Boston College Law School in 2002, Georgetown University Law Center from 2004 to 2005, Vanderbilt University Law School in 2007, and China University of Political Science and Law. At George Mason, he joined as assistant professor in 1998, became associate professor in 2000, professor in 2002, and Foundation Professor in 2009. He served as executive director of the Law & Economics Center from 2015 to 2017, co-founder and co-director of the Institute for Consumer Financial Choice since 2025, director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission from 2003 to 2004, and chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law from 2020 to 2021. In fall 2023, he was Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy at the University of Colorado Bruce Benson Center.

Zywicki has authored more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. Key books include editor of Unprofitable Schooling: Examining Causes of, and Fixes for, America’s Broken Ivory Tower (2019, with Neal McCluskey), Law and Economics: Private and Public (2018, with Maxwell Stearns and Thomas Miceli), Research Handbook on Austrian Law and Economics (2017, with Peter J. Boettke), and Consumer Credit and the American Economy (2014, with Thomas Durkin, Gregory Elliehausen, and Michael Staten). Major awards include the Heritage Foundation Freedom and Opportunity Academic Prize (2024), Society for the Development of Austrian Economics Prize for Best Article in Austrian Economics for “Hayekian Anarchism” (2012, with Edward Peter Stringham), and Institute for Humane Studies Charles G. Koch Outstanding Alumni Award (2009). Since 2005, he has ranked among the most-cited faculty in commercial law, top SSRN downloads, and testified before Congress on consumer bankruptcy and credit. He co-edited the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006 to 2017, delivered lectures including the Dean Lindsey Cowen Lecture in Business Law and Regulation (2011), and held senior fellowships at the Cato Institute, Mercatus Center, F.A. Hayek Program, and others. Zywicki serves on boards of the Institute for Humane Studies, Bill of Rights Institute, and Competitive Enterprise Institute.