Geoffrey C. Rapp was appointed Harold A. Anderson Professor of Law and Values at the College of Law in 2011. He joined the College of Law faculty in 2004 and was granted tenure in 2010.

Professor Rapp teaches and writes in the areas of corporate law and torts, and is licensed to practice law in Ohio, New York, and Illinois.  He has written more than thirty law review pieces, including works published in some of the nation’s top law reviews like the Washington University Law Review, Georgia Law Review and American University Law Review.  His 2007 Boston University Law Review article on securities fraud helped lay the groundwork for the adoption of bounty rewards for securities whistleblowers in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  In 2011, Professor Rapp testified before the U.S. Congress on the topic of Dodd-Frank whistleblower bounties. 

Professor Rapp earned an A.B. Phi Beta Kappa in Economics from Harvard College (1998) and a J.D. from the Yale Law School (2001).  While in law school, he served as a Notes Editor of the Yale Law Journal and a Teaching Fellow and Head Teaching Fellow in the Departments of Economics and Computer Science.  Before entering law teaching, he clerked for Judge Cornelia Kennedy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and worked in private practice.

Rapp has been frequently interviewed and quoted by local and national media, including National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, CBS Sports, The New York Times, USA Today, Toronto’s National Post, BBC Radio, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Toledo Blade and The Washington Times. Professor Rapp is the author of a monthly column, Diary of a Dad, for the Toledo Area Parent News (circulation 40,000).

Courses Taught:

Torts
Business Associations
Products Liability
Securities Regulation
Trusts & Estates
Antitrust
Sports Law

 

Publications

Mutiny by the Bounties?  The Attempt to Reform Wall Street by the New Whistleblower Provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, BYU Law Review (forthcoming 2012)

Regulating On-Line Peer-to-Peer Lending in the Aftermath of Dodd-Frank: In Search of an Evolving Regulatory Regime for an Evolving Industry, Washington & Lee Law Review (forthcoming 2012) (with Eric Chaffee, Dayton)

Torts 2.0, 37 William Mitchell Law Review (forthcoming 2011)

Tattoo Regrets and Extra Benefits: Does Free Ink Justify an NCAA Suspension of OSU’s Terrelle Pryor?, Journal of NCAA Compliance, January-February 2011

Defense Against Outrage and the Perils of Parasitic Torts,45 Georgia Law Review 107 (2010)

Salvage Awards on the Somali Coast:  Who Pays for Public and Private Rescue Efforts in Piracy Crises?, 59 American University Law Review 1399 (2010)

False Claims, Not Securities Fraud:  Towards Corporate Governance by Whistleblower, 15 Nexus Journal of Law & Policy 55 (2010)

Unmanned Aerial Exposure:  Civil Liability for Law Enforcement Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, 85 North Dakota Law Review 623 (2010)

Blue Sky Steroids, 99 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology  599 (2009)

The Wreckage of Recklessness, 86 Washington University Law Review 111 (2008)

Can You Show Me How To . . . ? Reflections of a New Law Professor and Part-Time Technology Consultant on the Role of New Law Teachers as Catalysts for Change, 58 Journal of Legal Education 61 (2008)

Beyond Protection: Invigorating Incentives for Sarbanes-Oxley Corporate and Securities Fraud Whistleblowers, 87 Boston University Law Review 91 (February 2007)

Gouging: Terrorist Attacks, Hurricanes, and the Legal and Economic Aspects of Post-Disaster Price Regulation, 94 Kentucky Law Journal 535 (2005-06)

Preserving LLC Veil Piercing: A Response to Bainbridge, 31 Journal of Corporation Law 1063 (2006)

A New Direction for Shareholder Environmental Activism: The Aftermath of  Caremark, 31 William & Mary Environmental Law Review 163 (2006-07)

Doctors, Duties, Death and Data: A Critical Review of the Empirical Literature on Medical Malpractice and Tort Reform, 26 Northern Illinois University Law Review 3 (2006)
 
Affirmative Injunctions in Athletic Employment Contracts: Rethinking the Place of the Lumley Rule in American Sports Law, 16 Marquette Sports Law Review 261 (2006)

Caremark Oversight Duties and Environmental Protection: A New Frontier for Shareholder Environmental Activism?, 30 William & Mary Environmental Law & Pol’y Rev .

Annual Survey of Michigan Law, June 1 2003-May 31, 2004: Commercial Transactions and Contracts, 51 Wayne Law Review (Fall 2005)

Annual Survey of Michigan Law, June 1 2002-May 31, 2003: Commercial Transactions and Contracts, 50 Wayne Law Review 383 (Summer 2004)

Proving Markets Inefficient: The Variability of Federal Court Decisions on Market Efficiency in Cammer v. Bloom and its Progeny, 10 University of Miami Business Law Review 303 (2002)

The Economics of Shootouts: Does the Passage of Capital Punishment Laws Protect or Endanger Police Officers?, 65 Albany Law Review 1051 (2002)

Nothing Quiet on the Eastern Front: Troubling Developments in the Russian Market for Corporate Control, 2 Chicago-Kent Journal of International & Comparative Law 14 (2002)

On the Liability of Corporate Directors to Holders of Securities for Illegal Corporate Behavior: Can the Tension Between the “Net-Loss” and “No-Duty-to-Disclose” Rules be Resolved?, 7 Fordham Journal of Corporate and Financial Law 101 (2001)

Monopoly’s Hidden Justice: How Lax Antitrust Enforcement May Stimulate Charitable Giving and Overcome the Political Economy Barriers to Redistributive Taxation, 70 University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review 303 (2001)

India’s Wayward Children: Are Affirmative Action Laws to Blame for Low Levels of Foreign Direct Investment by the Indian Diaspora?, 10 Minn. J. Global Trade 323 (2001) (with Kuziemko)

DNA’s Dark Side, 110 Yale Law Journal 163 (2001)

Customer Racial Discrimination in Major League Baseball: Is There No Hope for Equal Pay?, 7 Texas Hispanic Journal of Law and Policy 119 (2001) (with Ilyana M. Kuziemko)

Advanced Economic Development, International Trade and Farmers, 5 Drake Journal of Agricultural Law 471 (2000)

Article, Agency and Choice in Education, 8 Education Economics 37 (2000)(peer-reviewed)

Note, Reconsidering Educational Liability, 18 Yale Law & Policy Review 463 (2000)

Case Note, Low Riding, 110 Yale Law Journal 1089 (2000)

 

Professor Rapp’s SSRN page