William S. Dodge, the main expert on worldwide regulation, international transactions, and worldwide dispute decisions, has been named the inaugural holder of the John D. Ayer Chair in Business Law, the University of California, Davis, School of Law announced this week. This chair honors Professor Jack Ayer, an established instructor of financial ruin and other industrial law courses at UC Davis School of Law. Dodge has taught at UC Davis since 2015. “We are fortunate to have a student of the caliber of Professor Dodge,” Dean Kevin R. Johnson said. “This chair recognizes his scholarly, coaching, and provider excellence. We are indebted to the donors who made this chair feasible.”
Dodge served as a counselor on global law to the criminal adviser on the U.S. Department of State from 2011 to 2012 and as co-reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law from 2012 to 2018. He is a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law and an adviser to the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Third) of the Conflict of Laws.
Dodge is co-creator (with Detlev Vagts, Hannah Buxbaum, and Harold Koh) of the casebook Transnational Business Problems (6th ed. Foundation Press, 2019) and co-editor (with David Sloss and Michael Ramsey) of International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change (Cambridge University Press, 2011), which gained the American Society of International Law’s 2012 certificates of benefit. He has more than 50 other publications in books and regulation critiques, and his articles have been noted more than 30 times in courtroom reviews, including four instances with the aid of justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Dodge obtained the Rutter Distinguished Teaching Award at UC Davis and UC Hastings, where he was formerly the Roger J. Traynor Professor of Regulation. Dodge earned his bachelor’s degree in records, summa cum laude, from Yale University. After coaching English in Tianjin, China, he attended Yale Law School. He was a notes editor of the Yale Law Journal, served as director of the Lowenstein International Human Rights Project, and earned his law diploma.
Dodge clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. From 1993 to 1995, he became an attorney at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. Endowed professorships are funded through gifts that might be invested as endowments to make certain ongoing scholarly studies assist successive endowed professorship holders via many generations. The professorships help UC Davis attract and keep excellent scholars and instructors from throughout the arena.
