Zephyr Teachout
Professor of Law
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Zephyr Teachout is an Associate Law Professor and has taught at Fordham Law School since 2009. She grew up in Vermont and received her BA from Yale in English and then graduated summa cum laude from Duke Law School, where she was the Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review. She also received an MA in Political Science from Duke. She clerked for Chief Judge Edward R. Becker of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
She was a death penalty defense lawyer at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in North Carolina, and co-founded a non-profit dedicated to providing trial experience to new law school graduates. She is known for her pioneering work in internet organizing, and was the first national Director of the Sunlight Foundation.
She has written dozens of law review articles and essays and two books. Her book, "Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United" was published by Harvard University Press in 2014. She ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination of the Governor of New York in 2014, and for Congress's 19th Congressional District in 2016.
She lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband.
- Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Duke University
- National Director, Sunlight Foundation
- Lecturer, University of Vermont
- Political Consultant for nonprofits, political campaigns and citizen journalism organizations
- Non-resident Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School
- Director of Internet Organizing, Dean for America (Howard Dean’s Presidential Campaign)
- Co-Founding Executive Director, The Fair Trial Initiative
- Staff Attorney, Center for Death Penalty Litigation
- Clerk, Chief Judge Edward R. Becker, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Education
- JD, summa cum laude, Duke Law School
- MA, Political Science, Duke University
- BA, Yale University
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Representative Publications
Break 'em Up (forthcoming July 2020)
Submission for the Record to the Antitrust Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, April 3, 2020
Addressing Facebook and Google’s Harms Through a Regulated Competition Approach, American Economic Liberties Project, Working Paper Series on Corporate Powers, #2, April 2020
Antitrust Law, Freedom, and Human Development, Cardozo Law Review, Feb. 2020, Vol. 41 Issue 3, p1081-1140. 60p
From Private Bads to Public Goods: Adapting Public Utility Regulation for Informational Infrastructure (with Sabeel Rahman), Feb. 4, 2020
The Problem of Monopolies and Corporate Political Corruption, Daedalus, Volume 147, Issue 3, Summer 2018, p.111-126
Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United (Harvard University Press 2014)
Legalism and Devolution of Power in the Public Sphere: Reflections on Occupy Wall Street, 39 Fordham Urban Law Journal 101 (2014)
Market Structure and Political Law: A Taxonomy of Power, 9 Duke Journal of Law and Constitutional Policy 37 (2014)
Gifts, Offices, and Corruption, Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy, Vol. 107, p. 1 (2012)
Facts in Exile: Corruption and Abstraction in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 42 Loyola University Chicago Law Journal 295 (Winter 2011).
How Anarchists and Academics Created Corporate Speech, 5 Harvard Law and Policy Review 163 (2011)
The Historical Roots of Citizens United v. FEC: How Anarchists and Academics Accidentally Created Corporate Speech Rights, Harvard Law and Policy Review, Vol. 5, p. 163, 2011
The Unenforceable Corrupt Contract: Corruption and 19th Century Contract Law, NYU Review of Law and Social Change, Vol. 35, p. 693, 2011
Extraterritorial Electioneering and the Globalization of American Elections, BERKELEY J. INT’L L. 161 (2009).
The Anti-Corruption Principle, 94 CORNELL L. REV. 341 (2009).
Original Intent: How the Founding Fathers Would Clean Up K Street, DEMOCRACY: A JOURNAL OF IDEAS 11 (Winter 2009).
Mouse Pads, Shoe Leather and Hope: Lessons from the Howard Dean Campaign for the Future of Internet Politics (Paradigm Press, 2007) (ed. with T. Streeter).
Note, Defining and Punishing Abroad: The Extraterritorial Reach of the Offenses Clause, 48 Duke Law Journal 1305 (1999)