Louis Loss (1914-1997) was a legal scholar considered by many to be the intellectual father of modern securities law. He is best known for his treatise
Securities Regulation, which is still considered to be the definitive authority on the subject and which has been cited over 50 times by the
Supreme Court of the United StatesThe Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial body in the United States, and leads the federal judiciary. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justices, who are nominated by the President and confirmed with the "advice and consent" of the Senate...
. The Oxford English Dictionary credits him with having coined the word
tippee, to refer to someone who trades stock after getting a tip from a corporate insider.
Education and career at SEC
Loss graduated from the
University of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania is a private research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and is one of several institutions that claims to have been the first university in America...
(B.S.) in 1934 and
Yale Law SchoolYale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1843, the school offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D., and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars and a number of legal research centers. The school's prestige and small size make its...
(LL.B.) in 1937. He was also granted an honorary A.M. from
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
in 1953. Upon his graduation from Yale, Loss joined the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he served as staff attorney from 1937 to 1944, chief counsel of the Division of Trading and Exchanges from 1944 to 1948, and associate general counsel from 1948 to 1952. While at the SEC, he helped develop the initial theories that enabled the Securities and Exchange Commission to use the broadly worded anti-fraud provisions of the securities law to prosecute
insider trading"You want more insider trading, not less. You want to give the people most likely to have knowledge about deficiencies of the company an incentive to make the public aware of that."said-Milton Friedman, laureate of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics...
, an area not directly addressed by the law itself.
Career as a law professor
Loss held part-time teaching positions at Yale Law School and George Washington University Law School before joining the faculty of
Harvard Law SchoolHarvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. HLS typically ranks among the top law...
in 1952. He served as Professor of Law from 1952 to 1962 and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law from 1962 to 1984. During his tenure at Harvard, he was offered the chairmanship of the SEC by President
John F. KennedyJohn Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
, but he declined. He became William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law
Emeritus in 1984. Among his many students at Harvard were U.S. Supreme Court Justices
KennedyAnthony McLeod Kennedy is an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, having been appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1988...
,
GinsburgRuth Joan Bader Ginsburg is an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton with the support of Republican Judiciary Chairman Senator Orrin Hatch in 1993 and generally votes with the liberal wing of the court...
,
Scaliais an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was appointed in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan having previously served on the D.C. Circuit and in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and teaching law at the Universities of Virginia and Chicago...
, and
SouterDavid Hackett Souter David Hackett Souter David Hackett Souter served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1990 until his retirement on June 29, 2009. Appointed by Republican President George H. W. Bush to fill the seat vacated by...
. Till the end of his teaching days, he remained one of the most popular and admired professors among Harvard Law School students as well as among faculty. He also served as director of the Harvard Law School Program of Instruction for Lawyers from 1977 to 1984. After his death, Volume 111 #8 of the
Harvard Law ReviewThe Harvard Law Review is a journal of legal scholarship published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School.-Overview:The Review is one of the most cited law reviews in the United States. It is published monthly from November through June, with the November issue dedicated to covering...
was dedicated to him. Loss' wife, Bernice, served as Curator of the Harvard Law School legal portrait collection.