Todd Zywicki
Encyclopedia
Todd J. Zywicki is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law
George Mason University School of Law
George Mason University School of Law is the law school of George Mason University, a state university in Virginia, United States...

, teaching in the areas of bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....

 and contracts, where he has taught since 1998. He taught previously at the Mississippi College School of Law
Mississippi College School of Law
The Mississippi College School of Law is located in downtown Jackson, Mississippi. The law school started out as the Jackson School of Law in 1930, but was acquired by Mississippi College in 1975. The main campus of Mississippi College is located in Clinton, Mississippi.In December 2005, the school...

, where he held a faculty position from 1996 to 1998. Zywicki was a visiting professor of law at Vanderbilt University Law School
Vanderbilt University Law School
Vanderbilt University Law School is a graduate school of Vanderbilt University. Established in 1874, it is one of the oldest law schools in the southern United States. Vanderbilt Law has consistently ranked among the top 20 law schools in the nation, and is currently ranked 16th in the 2012...

 for the Fall 2007 Semester, Georgetown University Law Center
Georgetown University Law Center
Georgetown University Law Center is the law school of Georgetown University, located in Washington, D.C.. Established in 1870, the Law Center offers J.D., LL.M., and S.J.D. degrees in law...

 for the 2004–05 academic year, and a visiting professor at Boston College
Boston College
Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...

 in 2002. During the 2003–04 academic year, he served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act...

, in which capacity he testified before the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...

 Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection regarding reform issues.

Memberships and Affiliations

Zywicki is a member of the board of directors of the Bill of Rights Institute
Bill of Rights Institute
Bill of Rights Institute is a non-profit organization located in Arlington, Virginia, which produces instructional materials and conducts educational programs around the United States for teachers and students...

, and the governing board of the Financial Services Research Program at The George Washington University School of Business
The George Washington University School of Business
The George Washington University School of Business is the business school of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., United States. The GW School of Business is a top-tier institution that offers both undergraduate and graduate business degrees in a variety of programs...

. He is chair of the Academic Advisory Council of the Bill of Rights Institute, the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum
McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum
The McCormick Freedom Museum was the first museum in the United States dedicated to the First Amendment by the McCormick Foundation. It was open from April 11, 2006 until March 1, 2009. The museum offered visitors an interactive experience focused on first amendment rights which include freedom...

 in Chicago as well as the forthcoming film, "We The People in IMAX". He serves on the advisory council for the Financial Services Research Program at The George Washington University School of Business, the executive committee for the Federalist Society
Federalist Society
The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, most frequently called simply the Federalist Society, is an organization of conservatives seeking reform of the current American legal system in accordance with a textualist and/or originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution...

's Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the advisory council of the Competitive Enterprise Institute
Competitive Enterprise Institute
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit think tank founded on March 9, 1984 in Washington, D.C. by lobbyist Fred L. Smith, Jr to advance economic liberty and fight over-regulation by big government...

, and the Program Advisory Board of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment
Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment
The Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment , based in Bozeman, Montana, is a think-tank that promotes free-market environmentalism. FREE emphasizes reliance on market mechanisms and private property rights, rather than on environmental regulation, for protection of the environment...

.

Zywicki is senior fellow of the James Buchanan Center for Political Economy Program on Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at George Mason University, a senior fellow of the Goldwater Institute
Goldwater Institute
The Goldwater Institute is a Phoenix, Arizona-based conservative public policy research organization established in 1988. The president is Darcy A. Olsen. The Goldwater Institute advances public policies with emphasis on lower taxes, limited government spending, school choice, and a reduction in...

, a senior scholar of the Mercatus Center
Mercatus Center
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University in the United States is a non-profit market-oriented research, education, and outreach think tank affiliated with the Koch family. It works with policy experts, lobbyists, and government officials to connect academic learning and real-world practice...

 at George Mason University, and a fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

, Italy. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008–09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Hoover Institution
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace is a public policy think tank and library founded in 1919 by then future U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, an early alumnus of Stanford....

 on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a member of the United States Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...

 Study Group on "Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System".

Zywicki attended Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...

, graduating in 1988. At Dartmouth, he was a member of Zeta Psi
Zeta Psi
The Zeta Psi Fraternity of North America was founded June 1, 1847 as a social college fraternity. The organization now comprises about fifty active chapters and twenty-five inactive chapters, encompassing roughly fifty thousand brothers, and is a founding member of the North-American...

 Fraternity. In 2005, Zywicki was elected to the Dartmouth Board of Trustees as an Alumni Trustee. Zywicki is a trustee of Yorktown University, a conservative for-profit Internet-based university.

Legal Scholarship and Activities

Zywicki has testified on numerous occasions in his personal capacity before committees and subcommittees of the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

 and United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...

 on issues of bankruptcy and consumer credit. In 2005, he wrote at The Volokh Conspiracy
The Volokh Conspiracy
The Volokh Conspiracy is a blog which mostly covers United States legal and political issues, generally from a libertarian or conservative perspective. One of the most widely read legal blogs in the United States, The Volokh Conspiracy has more than one million page views each month. This group...

 that "the growth in subprime lending is not creating overwhelming debt burdens for low-income households."

During the run-up to the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA), a law that was heavily lobbied for by the financial services industry and that made it more difficult for consumers to discharge their credit card debts in bankruptcy, Professor Zywicki testified before Congress that the law was likely to reduce the costs of debt to all borrowers by reducing losses to credit card lenders:
"[W]hen creditors are unable to collect debts because of bankruptcy, some of those losses are inevitably passed on to responsible Americans who live up to their financial obligations. . . . We all pay for bankruptcy abuse in higher down payments, higher interest rates, and higher costs for goods and services."

"This bankruptcy 'tax' takes many forms. It is obviously reflected in higher interest rates. . . . It is [also] reflected in shorter grace periods for paying bills and higher penalty fees and late-charges for those who miss payments . . . [R]educing the number of strategic bankruptcies will reduce the bankruptcy tax paid by every American family . . . . These reforms will make the bankruptcy system more fair, equitable, and efficient, not only for bankruptcy debtors and creditors, but for all Americans."


Professor Zywicki's testimony, including his use of the phrase "Bankruptcy Tax", closely matched talking points used by lobbyists working for the credit card industry. Thanks in part to Professor Zywicki's testimony, the bill became law.

Professor Zywicki's predictions about the effects of BAPCPA on credit card pricing were almost immediately discredited by hard data. Although credit card company losses decreased, prices charged to consumers actually increased. Credit card industry profits swelled to record levels. The reason Professor Zywicki's predictions proved to be wrong appears to be that the credit card industry is not price-competitive, due to industry consolidation and to complicated fees that make it too difficult for consumers to price-shop.

Congress has not revised the consumer bankruptcy provisions of BAPCPA, but instead passed a law that requires improved disclosure of fees by credit card companies.

In his scholarly and popular writing, Professor Zywicki continues to write about issues that are of concern to the credit card industry, continues to suggest that the industry is price-competitive, and continues to argue that the interests of the credit card industry are closely aligned with those of its customers. He has recently argued against efforts to regulate the fees that credit card payment networks charge to merchants, claiming that such regulation will harm consumers because credit card companies will try to recover the lost revenue from them. Professor Zywicki's assertions have been challenged by financial engineers and legal scholars, including an economist whose work he has cited. George Mason University, where Professor Zywicki teaches, refuses to accept Visa for tuition payments because the interchange fees are too high.

Zywicki has also written editorials attacking academics who have disagreed with him in the past, notably Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren is an American bankruptcy expert, policy advocate, Harvard Law School professor, and Democratic Party candidate in the 2012 United States Senate election in Massachusetts. She has written several academic and popular books concerning the American economy and personal finance. She...

. However, the accuracy of Zywicki's criticism has been called into question.

Zywicki has been editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review
Supreme Court Economic Review
The Supreme Court Economic Review is an academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press. The journal applies economic and legal scholarship to the work of the United States Supreme Court. Articles consider the implicit or explicit economic reasoning employed by the Court to reach its...

since 2006. He previously served as editor from 2001 to 2002. The Supreme Court Economic Review is ranked second among all law and economics journals in citation impact studies.

Zywicki clerked
Law clerk
A law clerk or a judicial clerk is a person who provides assistance to a judge in researching issues before the court and in writing opinions. Law clerks are not court clerks or courtroom deputies, who are administrative staff for the court. Most law clerks are recent law school graduates who...

 for Judge Jerry Edwin Smith
Jerry Edwin Smith
Jerry Edwin Smith is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on June 2, 1987 and confirmed by the Senate on December 19, 1987. Smith received his commission for the seat, which was created by 98 Stat...

 of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird
Alston & Bird
Alston & Bird LLP, commonly abbreviated , is the largest law firm in Atlanta and the forty-third largest in the United States.-History:...

 in Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...

, where he practiced bankruptcy law. He received his J.D.
Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...

 from the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

 (1993), where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics.

Zywicki was a leading supporter of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which was enacted in 2005 with substantial bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress. One judge faced with interpreting the law stated that one 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 claims 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 law reviews and economics journals. He is a frequent commentator in print and broadcast media and a regular contributor to The Volokh Conspiracy
The Volokh Conspiracy
The Volokh Conspiracy is a blog which mostly covers United States legal and political issues, generally from a libertarian or conservative perspective. One of the most widely read legal blogs in the United States, The Volokh Conspiracy has more than one million page views each month. This group...

 blog. He is a frequent contributor to the media. In a column in The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....

in December 2008 Zywicki criticized proposals to bail out the American auto industry, arguing that they should file Chapter 11 instead. In a column in The Wall Street Journal in February 2009, Zywicki criticized proposals to permit bankruptcy judges to modify mortgage contracts. He has also appeared frequently on television and radio.

Dartmouth Board of Trustees

Zywicki was elected to the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College
Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College
The Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College is the governing body of Dartmouth College, an Ivy League university located in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. , the Board includes twenty-three people...

 in 2005. Speaking as a trustee, he delivered prepared remarks on the topic of university governance to a conference presented by the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in October 2007. Zywicki's remarks were critical of the board and included a controversial statement about Dartmouth's late former president James O. Freedman
James O. Freedman
James Oliver Freedman was a university president. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, he served briefly as Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School; as the sixteenth president of the University of Iowa from 1982 to 1987; and as the fifteenth president of Dartmouth College,...

:


They then brought in this fellow, truly evil man, James Freedman, who basically, simply put, his agenda was to turn Dartmouth into Harvard. Freedmanism basically had four planks.
  1. That Dartmouth should be a university rather than a college.
  2. Political correctness in all forms—speech codes, censorship, and the whole multicultural apparatus.
  3. Comprehensive social engineering of student life and replacement of the Greek system for instance.
  4. And a de-emphasis on Dartmouth's traditional values of educating well rounded leaders in favor of creative loners.



Other controversial statements included:

And I think what you have to understand is that those who control the university today they don't believe in God and they don't believe in country. University is their cathedrals.

So Democracy having not worked properly, this fall they decided to follow the Hugo Chavez
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is the 56th and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...

 form of democracy and simply impose...

And what we saw in September was that the Empire struck back. They rolled the tanks into Tiananmen Square. And basically they couldn't win at the ballot box and so they got rid of the ballot box.

The new dogma is environmentalism and feminism and that is the dogma and they will enforce it viciously. We have the Spanish inquisition
Spanish Inquisition
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition , commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition , was a tribunal established in 1480 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the Medieval...

 and you could ask Larry Summers
Lawrence Summers
Lawrence Henry Summers is an American economist. He served as the 71st United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He was Director of the White House United States National Economic Council for President Barack Obama until November 2010.Summers is the...

 whether or not the Spanish inquisition lives on academic campuses today. So that's why the first point is that we are either all in or we're not. It's going to be a long and vicious trench warfare, I think, if we are serious about taking the academy back.

You know $10 million or a million dollars is chump change at Dartmouth; that's a transformative gift to ... a place like George Mason Law School or the George Mason Economics department or these other pearls, these other places around the country, these alternative institutions that I think need to be supported.


In December 2007, the board reprimanded Zywicki for his remarks. According to a public announcement of the reprimand, "The Board concluded that he had exercised poor judgment and had violated his responsibilities as a Trustee of Dartmouth College, which include acting in the best overall interests of Dartmouth and representing Dartmouth positively in words and deeds." No other trustee has been reprimanded in recent memory. The trustees voted not to re-elect Zywicki at the end of his first term, though re-election is usually routine.

Education

  • A.B.
    Bachelor of Arts
    A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

    , Dartmouth College
    Dartmouth College
    Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...

  • M.A.
    Master's degree
    A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

    , Clemson University
    Clemson University
    Clemson University is an American public, coeducational, land-grant, sea-grant, research university located in Clemson, South Carolina, United States....

     (Economics
    Economics
    Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

    )
  • J.D., University of Virginia

External links


Publications and media

  • Farnsworth, Elizabeth
    Elizabeth Farnsworth
    Elizabeth Farnsworth is an American television news anchorwoman.Born in 1943 Elizabeth Fink in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to a family of farmers, teachers, doctors and railroad executives....

    , Todd Zywicki, and Karen Gross. "Going for Broke". NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Interview transcript. 17 May 1999. URL accessed 15 August 2006.
  • Ifill, Gwen
    Gwen Ifill
    Gwendolyn L. "Gwen" Ifill is an American journalist, television newscaster and author. She is the managing editor and moderator of Washington Week and a senior correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, both of which air on PBS. She is a political analyst, and moderated the 2004 and 2008 Vice...

    , 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.
    National Review
    National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...

    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.
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