Georgetown Law Professor Chris Brummer and Professor Gregory Klass have been named the 2017 Williams Research Professors. The Williams Professorships, established through the generosity of Agnes N. Williams (L’54), recognize and support the scholarly activities of Georgetown Law faculty.

Two Williams Research Professors are appointed to three-year terms each year. The inaugural holders, Professors Kristin Henning and John Mikhail, were named in 2016.

Professor Chris Brummer

“We are pleased to honor Chris and Greg with the 2017 Williams Professorships,” said Dean William M. Treanor. “From their cutting-edge scholarship and teaching in securities regulation and contracts, their professional achievements and writing from scholarly articles to blog posts, they contribute to Georgetown Law — and the broader national and international legal communities — every single day.”

Brummer, the faculty director of Georgetown’s Institute of International Economic Law, joined the Law Center faculty in 2009. He was previously an assistant professor of law at Vanderbilt Law School and has taught as a visiting professor at the universities of Basel, Heidelberg and the London School of Economics. Brummer has also served as a member of the National Adjudicatory Council of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), an organization empowered by Congress to regulate the securities industry.

Professor Gregory Klass

Brummer lectures widely on finance and global governance, as well as on public and private international law, market microstructure and international trade. His most recent book is Minilateralism: How Trade Alliances, Soft Law and Financial Engineering are Redefining Economic Statecraft (2014).

Brummer was nominated twice by President Obama to serve as a Commissioner on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The nomination was withdrawn by President Trump.

Brummer earned his J.D. with honors from Columbia Law School; he also holds a Ph.D. in Germanic Studies from the University of Chicago.

Klass, who served as associate dean for research and academic programs from 2012 to 2015, joined the Georgetown Law faculty in 2005. He teaches first-year contracts and an upper-level Law of Deception Seminar, examining laws and regulations that attempt to prevent dishonesty, disinformation and other forms of trickery. His scholarship focuses on contract law and legal theory.

Klass has written on fraud liability between contracting parties, remedies for bad faith breach and other noncooperative behavior, intent to contract requirements, the relationship between contract law and extra-legal norms, and the general theory of contract law. In 2006, he was awarded the Scribes Book Award for Insincere Promises: The Law of Misrepresented Intent (2005), which he co-authored with Ian Ayres.

Before coming to Georgetown, Klass served as an assistant solicitor general in the Office of the New York State Attorney General. He received his B.A. from Carleton College, a Ph.D. in philosophy from The Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, and his J.D. from Yale Law School. After graduating from law school, Klass clerked for Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.