Vanderbilt University Law School
Nicholas S. Zeppos
Chancellor, Vanderbilt University Professor of Law
Voice: 615-322-1813
Fax: 615-322-6060
Email: nick.zeppos@vanderbilt.edu
Office: 211 Kirkland Hall
Links
Education
J.D., B.A., University of Wisconsin
Biography
Nicholas Zeppos is a distinguished legal scholar who has written widely on legislation, administrative law and professional responsibility and is nationally recognized in those fields.
Zeppos was named Chancellor of Vanderbilt University in March 2008 after serving as Vanderbilt's interim chancellor since August 2007. He had previously served as Vanderbilt’s chief academic officer, overseeing the university’s undergraduate, graduate and professional education programs and research in liberal arts and sciences, engineering, music, education, business, law and divinity, and as the university's Provost and Vice Chancellor, chairing the university's budgeting and capital planning council and leading the institution's development and alumni relations, student affairs and admissions programs.
Chancellor Zeppos joined Vanderbilt's law faculty as an assistant professor in 1987, and won five teaching awards while teaching Civil Procedure and Administrative Law. He subsequently served as an associate dean at the law school and then as an associate provost for Vanderbilt University before being named Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs in 2002.
Before joining Vanderbilt's law faculty, Zeppos practiced law in Washington, D.C., from 1982-87, first at the United States Department of Justice, and then with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, where he specialized in appellate litigation involving complex regulatory, statutory and constitutional matters. He chaired the Scholars Committee, advising the Senate and the ABA on the confirmation of Justice Stephen Breyer, and also chaired the Rules Advisory Committee of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He has served as a consultant to government agencies, major corporations and trade associations on issues involving complex litigation, policy design and strategy.
Representative Publications
Articles
"Monitoring Government Disposition of Assets: Fashioning Regulatory Substitutes for Market Controls," 52 Vanderbilt Law Review 1705 (1999) (with H. Krent)
"Department of Justice Litigation: Externalizing Costs and Searching for Subsidies," 61 Law & Contemporary Problems 171 (1998)
"Reforming a Private Legislature: The Maturation of the American Law Institute as a Legislative Body," 23 Law & Social Inquiry 657 (1998)
"The Legal Profession and the Development of Administrative Law," 72 Chicago-Kent Law Review 1119 (1997)
"Judicial Review of Agency Action: The Problems of Commitment, Non-Contractibility and the Proper Incentives," 44 Duke Law Journal 1133 (1995)
"Chief Justice Rehnquist: The Two Faces of Ultra-Pluralism and the Originalist Fallacy," 25 Rutgers Law Journal 679 (1994)
"The Administrative State," "Justice David M. Souter," and "Justice Clarence Thomas," in The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (Oxford University Press, 1992)
"The Use of Authority in Statutory Interpretation: An Empirical Analysis," 70 Texas Law Review 1073 (1992)
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