Rebecca Haw Allensworth has been appointed to the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law.
Allensworth’s appointment to the chair was announced by Chris Guthrie, Dean and John Wade-Kent Syverud Professor of Law.
The David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law was endowed in honor of David Daniels Allen, BA’58, a founding partner of Reynolds Allen & Cook in Houston, after his untimely death in 1980 at the height of his legal career. A group of friends and Vanderbilt alumni, led by a close friend of Allen’s father, George Brown, established the chair with contributions from the Brown Foundation; Allen’s widow, Beth Allen Blakemore; his father, Herbert Allen; Milton Underwood ’28; Cameron Iron Works; and J. Hicks Lanier, BA’62.
“Rebecca’s scholarship tackles some of our most pressing societal issues, from big tech competition to the opioid epidemic, and helps shape the way we think about antitrust law and professional licensing,” said Dean Guthrie. “I’m grateful for the group who support not just this chair, but the four additional Allen chairs that support our faculty.”
Allensworth is a nationally recognized expert in antitrust, with a particular focus on tech platforms. Her research on professional licensing explores how lawmakers should balance the need for expertise in regulating the professions with the problems that can arise from self-regulation. She is currently writing a book about professional licensing and self-regulation. Her article about medical licensing boards and unethical prescribers, “Licensed to Pill,” appeared in The New York Review of Books in July 2020. Her work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and received the thirteenth annual Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award for groundbreaking antitrust scholarship.
Professor Allensworth earned her undergraduate degree from Yale and an M.Phil. from Cambridge University before earning her J.D. at Harvard Law School, where she served as articles editor of the Harvard Law Review. She served as law clerk to Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and then as a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School before coming to Vanderbilt. She held the Tarkington Chair of Teaching Excellence before her appointment to the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law. She assumed the role of Associate Dean for Research in January 2023.
