Todd Zywicki

Websites

Todd's episode appearances

#Social Media

Episode 218: “The Ugly Truth About the White House, the FBI and the Social Media Companies” with Jenin Younes and Todd Zywicki

Newly released documents show that the White House has played a major role in censoring Americans on social media. Email exchanges between Rob Flaherty, the White House’s director of digital media, and social-media executives prove the companies put Covid censorship policies in place in response to relentless, coercive pressure from the White House—not voluntarily as the government has claimed. The emails emerged last month in the discovery phase of Missouri v. Biden, a free-speech case brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana and four private plaintiffs, including leading epidemiologists Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya and Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff. Government’s role in social media censorship has been just as bad as we feared and worse. So what are the details, and what’s at stake? To explain, Jenin Younes, litigation counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance which is representing the private plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden, joins me on this episode with Todd Zywicki, Professor at George Mason’s Scalia Law School and who was last on the show exploring with me whether “Chinese-Style Social Credit Will Be Coming to America” The […]

Episode 198: Will Chinese-Style Social Credit Be Coming to America? with Todd Zywicki

In the decade since Barrack Obama remarked that “it would be so much easier to be the President of China,” the Chinese Communist Party has been working hard to make that job even easier. How? One way is to impose a social credit system that monitors, rewards, and punishes people according to how closely their behavior conforms to the Party’s diktats. “The social credit system is an important component of the social market, the socialist market economy, and the social government system. Keeping trust is glorious, and breaking trust is disgraceful,” the Party declares. So what happens in China when its people do things that the Communist Party thinks “breaks its trust”? We saw that last month when some Chinese banking customers tried to organize a rally to protest having access to their bank deposits cut off. The CCP flipped their social credit health codes to red, which means they couldn’t use public transport, they couldn’t go into restaurants, they couldn’t go into malls, they lost their right to travel. They were made into non-persons. Could this happen in America? […]

#Money

Episode 190: “Cancel Culture Comes to Banking” with Todd Zywicki and Paul Watkins

Have you ever thought about what your life would be like if you were denied access to a bank account or a credit card or access to any kind of digital payment system? Well, it’s happening and it’s happening to an increasing number of people and organizations. Cancel culture has come to banking. PayPal, major credit card networks and banks have already stopped processing payments for organizations they deem “hate groups.” Remember “Operation Chokepoint”? Well, it’s evolved and gotten even more draconian. And cryptocurrencies, which some thought might be a safe haven, well, maybe not so much. Bitcoin was supposed to be a financial lifeline for the truckers in Canada, but instead, Canadian authorities ordered banks and crypto exchanges to block transactions from crypto wallets tied to the truckers. Seems like everything has now become political, including our digital money. Joining me for a chilling conversation about these threats are Todd Zywicki, who served as Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Task Force on Consumer Financial Law and at George Mason’s Scalia Law School, and Paul Watkins with Potomac […]

#COVID-19

Episode 148: “Vaccine Mandates?” with Professor Todd Zywicki and Jenin Younes

On June 28th 2021, George Mason University announced its reopening policy related to the COVID-19 for the fall 2021 semester. The policy required all unvaccinated students and staff members – including those who can demonstrate natural immunity from prior COVID-19 infections – to wear masks on campus, physically distance and undergo frequent COVID-19 testing. On July 22, GMU emailed the policy to students and employees and threatened disciplinary action—including termination of employment—against any who do not comply with the vaccine mandate. The university’s website describing its vaccination policy reiterated this threat. On August 3, 2021, GMU Professor Todd Zywicki, represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), filed a complaint in the Eastern District of Virginia, challenging GMU’s so-called “reopening policy.” “This coercive mandate violates my constitutional right to bodily integrity for no compelling reason,” explains Prof Zywicki. “For those of us who have acquired natural immunity, vaccination provides none of the benefits of vaccination with all of the costs.” At issue. Are GMU and other institutions across the country ignoring science, and within their rights, to force mandatory vaccines […]

#Regulation

Episode 137: “How Financial Regulations are Reshaping America” with Todd Zywicki and Brian Johnson

If you think a show about financial regulation is likely to be boring, I ask you to think again. Financial regulations are really about money. And in particular, ordinary Americans’ money. Consumer credit and credit cards Student loans Credit reporting Mortgage finance Fintech Crypto currencies How small businesses get financed And financial regulations have become yet another primary battlefield on which the Left hopes to fundamentally transform America through the prisms of race and social justice. Joining me to explain this at-first-glance arcane but critically important topic is Todd Zywicki professor of law at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia law school and Brian Johnson who was deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They make this come alive. To learn what’s at stake, listen in.

about Todd

TODD J. ZYWICKI is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at George Mason University Antonin Scalia School of Law, Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute, and former Executive Director of the GMU Law and Economics Center. In 2020-21 he served as the Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2021 he was inducted into the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers. He served as Chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Law & Economics in 2019. From 2003-2004, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. In 2009, Professor Zywicki was the recipient of the Institute for Humane Studies 2009 Charles G. Koch Outstanding IHS Alum Award. He served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review from 2006-2017 and as Editor from 2001-2002. He teaches in the area of Bankruptcy, Contracts, Commercial Law, Law & Economics, and Public Choice and the Law. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, and China University of Political Science and Law.Professor Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his JD from the University of Virginia, where he was executive editor of the Virginia Tax Review and John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics. Professor Zywicki also received an MA in Economics from Clemson University and an AB cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.

Professor Zywicki is the author of more than 130 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He has been one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network, both All Time and during the Past 12 Months, and is currently ranked in the top 10% in total number of downloads for all fields on on SSRN. From 2013-2017 and 2010-2014 he was among the ten most-cited faculty in the field of Commercial Law. From 2005-2009 was the eleventh most-highly cited law professor in the fields of Commercial Law and Bankruptcy and the most-cited Commercial Law and Bankruptcy scholar under the age of 45 (at that time). He has testified several times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in the print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, Washington Times, Forbes, Nightline, National Review, NBC Nightly News, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Fox and Friends, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg News, BBC, ABC Radio, The Diane Rehm Show, Lou Dobbs Radio Show, Neil Cavuto Show, John Batchelor Show, and The Laura Ingraham Show. He is a contributor to the popular legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy.

Professor Zywicki is also a Senior Fellow at the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and has previously served as a Senior Scholar of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Adjunct Scholar of the Cato Institute, a Senior Fellow of the International Center for Law and Economics, a Fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy, a Lone Mountain Fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center, and Senior Fellow of the Goldwater Institute. During the Fall 2008 Semester Professor Zywicki was the Searle Fellow of the George Mason University School of Law and was a 2008-09 W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Arch W. Shaw National Fellow at the the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including the European Union, Germany, Canada, Guatemala, Iceland, Italy, Japan, and Romania. In 2006 Professor Zywicki served as a Member of the United States Department of Justice Study Group on “Identifying Fraud, Abuse and Errors in the United States Bankruptcy System.” In 2011 Professor Zywicki delivered the Dean Lindsey Cowen Lecture in Business Law and Regulation at Case Western Reserve School of Law. In 2013 he was invited to deliver a Vision Series Lecture at George Mason University (watch here). In 2013 he delivered the Jack R. Lee Chair of Financial Institutions and Consumer Finance Lecture at Mississippi State University School of Business. He was awarded the 2012 Society for the Development of Austrian Economics prize for “Best Article in Austrian Economics” for his article “Hayekian Anarchism” (co-authored with Edward Peter Stringham).

Professor Zywicki is a member of the the board of trustees or advisory board of numerous nonprofit and educational organizations, including the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies, the Board of Directors of the The Bill of Rights Institute, the Executive Committee for the Federalist Society’s Financial Institutions and E-Commerce Practice Group, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment(FREE), the Board of Trustees of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (where he also previously served as Chairman). He also previously served on the Advisory Council of the Centro para el Analisis de las Decisiones Publicas, Universidad de Francisco Marroquin, Guatemala City, Guatemala (Public Choice Center at University of Francisco Marroquin). He has also served as Chair of the Academic Advisory Council for The Bill of Rights Institute, the film “We the People in IMAX,” and the McCormick-Tribune Foundation “Freedom Museum” in Chicago, Illinois. From 2005-2009 he served as an elected Alumni Trustee of the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College and was a trustee of Yorktown University.