W&L Law Prof. Christopher Bruner Named Director of the Lewis Law Center
Christopher Bruner, Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, has been appointed Director of the Frances Lewis Law Center by Dean Nora V. Demleitner.
The Frances Lewis Law Center is the independently funded faculty research and support arm of W&L Law. As Director, Bruner will oversee the Center’s agenda, which includes funding summer research projects and research assistants for faculty, sponsoring and supporting conferences and symposia organized at the Law School, and hosting visiting scholars for workshop presentations or more extended visits.
“I am delighted to see Christopher step into the role of Law Center Director, bringing yet again an outstanding scholar into this leadership position,” said Demleitner. “His strategic thinking and creativity will further enhance the Law Center’s importance in the intellectual life of the Law School and the faculty’s scholarly accomplishments.”
Bruner joined the Washington and Lee faculty in 2009. His teaching and scholarship focus on corporate law and securities regulation, including international and comparative dimensions of these subjects.
Bruner’s articles have appeared in a variety of law and policy journals, and he has twice received the Law School’s Ethan Allen Faculty Fellowship for scholarly excellence. His comparative study of U.S. and U.K. corporate governance, “Power and Purpose in the ‘Anglo-American’ Corporation,” won the 2010 Association of American Law Schools Scholarly Papers competition. His book, “Corporate Governance in the Common-Law World: The Political Foundations of Shareholder Power” (Cambridge University Press), develops a new comparative theory of corporate governance in common-law countries.
Bruner has presented his scholarship in Australia, Denmark, Mexico, Russia, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S., and has conducted research as a visitor to the law faculties of the University of Cambridge, the University of Sydney, and the University of Toronto. He has twice traveled to the Russian Federation at the invitation of the U.S.-Russia Foundation for Economic Advancement and the Rule of Law (USRF) to participate in discussions with justices of the Supreme Commercial Court regarding Russian corporate law reform and potentially useful models from U.S. corporate and securities law.
“The Frances Lewis Law Center has long fostered innovative research bringing scholarly rigor to bear upon legal reform efforts,” said Bruner. “It’s a great honor to serve as Director, and I look forward to working with our faculty, students, and administration to build upon this shared tradition of excellence and further enrich the intellectual life of the Law School community.”
Bruner currently serves as a member of the Executive Committee for the Association of American Law Schools’ Section on Business Associations, and a member of the Scholarship Advisory Group to the Younger Comparativists Committee of the American Society of Comparative Law.
Bruner received his A.B. with highest honors in 1995 from the University of Michigan, and his M.Phil. in 1997 from the University of Oxford, where he held an Overseas Research Student Award. He received his J.D. in 2001 from Harvard Law School, where he served as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard International Law Journal. Before joining the academy, he practiced corporate and securities law with Ropes & Gray in Boston.
Established in 1978 with a generous gift from Frances and Sydney Lewis, the Law Center’s mandate is to support faculty research and scholarship that advances legal reform.
