Biography

An experienced practitioner of corporate and securities law before entering academia, Ronald J. Gilson is the author of major casebooks on corporate finance and corporate acquisitions. He has written widely on U.S. and comparative corporate governance and on venture capital and was a reporter of the American Law Institute’s Corporate Governance Project. Professor Gilson is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the European Corporate Governance Institute and is the board chair for American Century Investments in Mountain View, managing over $26 billion in assets. In addition to his role at Stanford Law School, he is the Marc and Eva Stern Professor of Law and Business at Columbia University School of Law.

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1979, Professor Gilson was a partner at a San Francisco corporate law firm. He clerked for Chief Judge David L. Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Courses & Programs

Courses

• Comparative Corporate Capitalism
• Corporate Acquisitions
• Securities Litigation

Programs

• John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics, Charles J. Meyers Professor of Law and Business

Publications & Cases

Recent Publications View All

• Ronald J. Gilson, Catalysing Corporate Governance: The Evolution of the United States System in the 1980s and 1990s, in The History of Modern U.S. Corporate Governance, Brian R. Cheffins, editor, Cheltenham, UK : Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011.
• Ronald J. Gilson, Henry Hansmann & Mariana Pargendler, Regulatory Dualism as a Development Strategy: Corporate Reform in Brazil, the United States, and the European Union, 63 Stanford Law Review 475 (2011).
• Ronald J. Gilson, Reflections on Value Creation, in Keynote Discussion: Just Exactly What does a Transactional Lawyer Do?, 12 Transactions, the Tennessee Journal of Business Law 175 (2011).
• Ronald J. Gilson, Charles F. Sabel, Robert E. Scott, Contract, Uncertainty and Innovation, in Rules for Growth: Promoting Innovation and Growth Through Legal Reform, Kauffman Task Force on Law, Innovation, and Growth, ed., Kansas City, Mo.: Kauffman, 2011.
• Robert E. Litan, Yochai Benkler, Henry N. Butler, John Henry Clippinger, Robert Cook-Deegan, Robert, D Cooter, Aaron S. Edlin, Nicole Stelle Garnett, Ronald J. Gilson, Oliver R. Goodenough, Gilian K. Hadfield, Mark A. Lemley, and 12 others, Rules for Growth: Promoting Innovation and Growth Through Legal Reform, Working Paper Series, (2011).
• Ronald J. Gilson, Charles F. Sabel, Robert E. Scott, Contract, Uncertainty and Innovation, Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper no. 385 / Stanford Law and Economics Olin Working Paper no. 403 (2010)
• Ronald J. Gilson, Charles F. Sobel, Robert E. Scott, Braiding: The Interaction of Formal and Informal Contracting in Theory, Practice and Doctrine, 110 Columbia Law Review, 1377 (2010)
• Ronald J. Gilson and Curtis J. Milhaupt, Economically Benevolent Dictators: Lessons for Developing Democracies, Stanford Public Law Working Paper, No. 1564925 / Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper, No. 371 (2010).
• Ronald Gilson and Michael Klausner, That's My Money You're Using Forbes Magazine, March 29, 2010, pg. 28.
• Ronald J. Gilson, Henry Hansmann, and Mariana Pargendler, Regulatory Dualism as a Development Strategy: Corporate Reform in Brazil, the U.S., and the EU, Stanford Law and Economics Olin Working Paper, No. 390 (January 2010) / Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper, No. 368 / Yale Law & Economics Research Paper No. 399 / ECGI - Law Working Paper No. 149/2010.

Affiliations & Honors

Honors and Awards

• Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences