Prof Judge image

Kathryn Judge

  • Harvey J. Goldschmid Professor of Law; Vice Dean for Intellectual Life
Education

J.D., Stanford University, 2004
B.A., Wesleyan University, 1999

Areas of Specialty

Banking
Corporations
Financial Institutions/Regulation

Kathryn Judge is the Harvey J. Goldschmid Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Intellectual Life at Columbia Law School. Her research focuses on banking, financial innovation, financial crises and regulatory architecture. Her academic work has received accolades from academic peers and industry.

Judge currently serves on the Research Committee and Law Working Paper Series Editorial Board for the European Corporate Governance Institute. She was an editor of the Journal of Financial Regulation and she served on the Financial Stability Task Force co-sponsored by the Brookings Institution and Chicago Booth School of Business as well as the Financial Research Advisory Committee to the Office of Financial Regulation. While serving on FRAC, she co-chaired the working group on financial innovation and the working group on the LIBOR transition.

In her book Direct: The Rise of the Middleman Economy and the Power of Going to the Source (HarperBusiness), she uses the insights she gained from her research on financial intermediation to explain broader shifts in the structure of the economy, the increasing power of intermediaries across numerous domains, and how these changes have contributed to new sources of fragility and undermined accountability. Direct was on the longlist for the Financial Times Business book of the Year, received the Gold Medal for Business Theory from Axiom Business Book Awards and was included among the  “Top 16 Finance Books of 2022” and “Top 22 Business Books of 2022” by Next Big Idea Club. More information about Direct, Judge's popular writing, and other press is available on her website, kathrynjudge.com

Prior to joining Columbia Law School, Judge clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Stephen Breyer of the Supreme Court. She also worked as a corporate associate with Latham & Watkins LLP. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School (J.D. with Distinction, 2004), where she earned the Urban A. Sontheimer Honor (second in class), and Wesleyan University (B.A. with High Honors, 1999).

Publications

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