About the Authors
Ronald J. Mann
Education
J.D., The University of Texas School of Law. Austin, TX., Texas Law Review, Managing Editor, 1985
B.A., Rice University. Houston, TX. History, 1982.
Background
Law clerk to Judge Joseph T. Sneed, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (1985-1986). Law clerk to Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Supreme Court of the United States (1986-1987) . Practiced real estate and transactional law in Houston, Texas (1987-1991). Worked for the Justice Department as an Assistant for the Solicitor General of the United States, (1991-1994) .
Joined the University of Texas faculty in 2003. Assistant professor of law (1997-1999), and professor of law (1999-2003), at the University of Michigan. Assistant professor of law (1994-1997), and professor of law (1997), at Washington University. Visiting professor of law at Harvard in 2005. Joined the Columbia Law School faculty on July 1, 2007.
Member of the American Law Institute. Recently served as the reporter for the amendments to Articles 3 and 4 of the Uniform Commercial Code.
Books
- Charging Ahead (Cambridge Univ. Press 2006)
Articles
- Making Sense of Payments Policy in the Information Age, 93 Geo. L.J. 633 (2005)
- Do Patents Facilitate Financing in the Software Industry?, 83 Texas L. Rev. 961 (2005)
- An Empirical Investigation of Liquidation Choices of Failed High-Tech Firms, 82 Wash. U.L.Q. 1375 (2004)
- Regulating Internet Payment Intermediaries, 82 Texas L. Rev. 681 (2004)
- Credit Cards and Debit Cards in the United States and Japan , 55 Vand. L. Rev. 1055 (2002)
- The Role of Letters of Credit in Payment Transactions,99 Mich. L. Rev. 2494 (2000)
- Secured Credit and Software Financing, 85 Cornell L. Rev. 134 (1999)
- Strategy and Force in the Liquidation of Secured Debt, 96 Mich. L. Rev. 159 (1997)
Elizabeth Warren
Professor Elizabeth Warren is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard University, where she won the Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence. Students have also awarded Elizabeth Warren teaching prizes at University of Houston, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. She has written eight books and more than a hundred scholarly articles dealing with credit and economic stress. Warren has been a principal investigator on empirical studies funded by the National Science Foundation and more than a dozen private foundations. She served as Vice-President of the American Law Institute, and she has been inducted into the American Academic of Arts and Sciences. Warren was the Chief Adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and she was appointed by Chief Justice Rehnquist as the first academic member of the Federal Judicial Education Committee. She currently serves as a member of the Commission on Economic Inclusion established by the FDIC. She has testified several times before House and the Senate committees on financial issues. The National Law Journal has repeatedly named Professor Warren as one of the Fifty Most Influential Women Attorneys in America.
EDUCATION
University of Houston B.S. 1970
Rutgers University J.D. 1976
Jay Lawrence Westbrook
One of the nation's most distinguished scholars in the field of bankruptcy, he has been a pioneer in this area in two respects: empirical research and international/comparative studies. Professor Westbrook also teaches and writes in commercial law and international business litigation. He practiced in all these areas for more than a decade with Surrey & Morse (now part of Jones, Day) in Washington, D.C., where he was a partner, before joining the faculty in 1980. He is co-author of The Law of Debtors and Creditors (Aspen, 5th ed., 2005), As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America (Oxford, 1989), and The Fragile Middle Class (Yale, 2000). He has been Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and the University of London, and is a member of the American Law Institute, the National Bankruptcy Conference, and the American College of Bankruptcy. He has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He was the United States Reporter for the ALI's Transnational Insolvency Project and co-head of the United States delegation to the UN (UNCITRAL) conference on cross-border insolvency. He is a director of the International Insolvency Institute and President-Elect of the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law. He has twice been named the Outstanding Teacher at the University of Texas School of Law.
EDUCATION
JD 1968, University of Texas at Austin
BA 1965, University of Texas at Austin



