A chaired professorship is the highest honor awarded in legal academia. At its meeting on Aug. 18, 2022, the university’s Board of Trustees voted to appoint Professor Charles R. Korsmo as the inaugural recipient of the Morris G. Shanker Chaired Professorship of Law.
This new Chaired Professorship is named in honor of Professor Emeritus Morris G. Shanker, an award-winning educator and legal scholar who passed away in August 2020 after teaching for four decades at CWRU.
“Thanks to the generosity of alums and friends, CWRU School of Law has 14 Chaired Professorships—a relatively large number that reflects the school’s ranking as one of the most-cited faculty in the nation,” said Co-Dean Michael Scharf.
“A chaired professorship is a badge of distinction that recognizes faculty for having earned a national reputation for scholarly excellence in their field,” added Co-Dean Berg.
Professor Korsmo received his B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000, and then worked from 2001 to 2003 at the Environmental Protection Agency, and for the U.S House of Representatives as staff for the House Policy Committee and the Homeland Security Committee. He then obtained his JD from Yale Law School in 2006, where he was awarded the William K.S. Wang Prize for superior performance in Corporate Law.
Prior to joining the faculty of our Law School in 2011, Korsmo clerked for the Honorable Ralph K. Winter on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and practiced in the New York office of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. From 2009 to 2011, Korsmo was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Brooklyn Law School. He was appointed as an Assistant Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in 2011, promoted to Associate Professor of Law in 2015 and to full Professor of Law with tenure in 2017.
Professor Korsmo teaches courses in corporate law, mergers, & acquisitions, corporate finance and torts. He is among the most prolific and one of the top 10 most-cited scholars on the faculty of the law school. His articles have appeared in the Iowa Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, Journal of Corporation Law, William & Mary Law Review and Brooklyn Law Review, among others. Multiple articles of his have been selected for republication in annual compilations, such as the Securities Law Review and Corporate Practice Commentator. He is widely viewed as a star in the field of corporate law and his scholarship has been cited numerous times by the Delaware Court of Chancery, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
A formal “chairing ceremony” for Professor Korsmo will be held as part of the Law School’s annual Celebration of Faculty event in May 2023.