Faculty and Staff

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, BYU Law Review, Washington and Lee 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, national, and international media, including National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, CBS Sports, The New York Times, USA Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, The LA Times, The New York Post, Business Week, Forbes, The Guardian (UK), The Toronto Star, Toronto’s National Post, BBC Radio, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, Scout.com,The Toledo Blade and The Washington Times.   He has also written op-eds and columns for USA Today, The Washington Post, and cnn.com

Courses Taught:

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

 

Recent Publications

Mutiny by the Bounties?  The Attempt to Reform Wall Street by the New Whistleblower Provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, 2012 BYU Law Review 73

Regulating On-Line Peer-to-Peer Lending in the Aftermath of Dodd-Frank: In Search of an Evolving Regulatory Regime for an Evolving Industry, 69 Washington & Lee Law Review 485 (2012) (with Eric Chaffee, Dayton)

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

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

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

 

Professor Rapp’s SSRN page