Christopher  M.  Bruner

Biography

Christopher Bruner joined Washington and Lee as an Associate Professor in 2009.  His teaching and scholarship focus on corporate law and securities regulation, including international and comparative dimensions of these subjects.

Professor Bruner’s articles have appeared in a variety of law and policy journals.  His comparative study of U.S. and U.K. corporate governance, “Power and Purpose in the ‘Anglo-American’ Corporation,” won the 2010 Association of American Law Schools Scholarly Papers competition.  His book, Corporate Governance in the Common-Law World: The Political Foundations of Shareholder Power (Cambridge University Press, 2013), develops a new comparative theory of corporate governance in common-law countries.   

Professor Bruner has presented his scholarship in Australia, Denmark, Mexico, Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and has conducted research as a visitor to the law faculties of the University of Cambridge, the University of Sydney, and the University of Toronto. He has twice traveled to the Russian Federation at the invitation of the U.S.-Russia Foundation for Economic Advancement and the Rule of Law (USRF) to participate in discussions with justices of the Supreme Commercial Court regarding Russian corporate law reform and potentially useful models from U.S. corporate and securities law.

Professor Bruner received his A.B. with highest honors in 1995 from the University of Michigan, and his M.Phil. in 1997 from the University of Oxford, where he held an Overseas Research Student Award.  He received his J.D. in 2001 from Harvard Law School, where he served as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard International Law Journal, and then practiced with Ropes & Gray LLP in Boston, where he worked with public and closely held companies on a range of corporate, transactional, and securities matters.  Prior to joining Washington and Lee, he was a Research Associate at Harvard Business School, a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Boston University School of Law, and an Assistant Professor at the Texas Tech University School of Law.  At Washington and Lee, Professor Bruner’s courses include Close Business Arrangements, Deals, and Securities Regulation.