James Tierney

James Fallows Tierney

Assistant Professor

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James Fallows Tierney joined the Chicago-Kent College of Law faculty in fall 2023. He teaches courses in business law and administrative law. Before joining the faculty, he was an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law and a lecturer at Rutgers Law School.

Tierney’s research focuses on how law shapes the way that ordinary people and financial markets interact with each other. He is an expert in the regulation of broker-dealers, investment advisers, and self-regulatory organizations such as stock exchanges. His research has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as the Yale Law Journal (main and Forum); Duke Law Journal (twice); Stanford Journal of Law, Business, and Finance; University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law (twice); Case Western Reserve Law Review; and the Nebraska Law Review. His article, “Investment Games,” about the regulation of gamified stock trading apps, was selected for the Harvard/Yale/Stanford Junior Faculty Forum in 2022.

Before joining academia, he practiced in the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of the General Counsel for five years, had a regulatory and appellate practice at Mayer Brown LLP in Washington, D.C., and clerked for Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He has degrees from Brown University and the University of Chicago. Outside work, he is the treasurer and a board member of the nonprofit DSA Fund.

Education

J.D., University of Chicago Law School

M.A., University of Chicago

A.B., Brown University

Publications

Articles, Essays, and Book Chapters

Shorter pieces

Contact Information

Media Appearances

Supreme Court’s Jarkesy Decision Strikes Serious Blow to the Administrative State, Says Chicago-Kent Assistant Professor James Tierney

The SEC had already taken the hint from a 2018 case that the Supreme Court wasn't thrilled with in-house judges and cases and brought its most serious types of fraud cases to the courts, says James Tierney, assistant professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and a former staff attorney for the agency. “The SEC doesn't have infinite resources, and so if the cost of settlement goes up, it means they're going to have fewer resources to bring enforcement actions,” Tierney says.

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