College of Law

Geoffrey C. Rapp

Geoffrey Christopher Rapp

Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Harold A. Anderson Professor of Law & Values

Office: LC 2000C
Campus Phone: 419.530.4107; Fax: 419.530.7911
Email: Geoffrey.Rapp@utoledo.edu

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Professor Rapp joined the College of Law in 2004 and serves as senior associate dean for academic affairs and Harold A. Anderson Professor of Law and Values. He previously served as was the associate dean for academic affairs from 2015-20 and senior associate dean for academic affairs from 2020-21. In 2013, he was named Outstanding Faculty Member by the College of Law Alumni Affiliate. In 2016, he was one of three faculty members from across the University to receive the Outstanding Faculty Research and Scholarship Award. In 2023, he was selected by 1L students as the winner of the law school's Beth A. Eisler Award for First-Year Teaching. 

Professor Rapp teaches and writes in the areas of corporate law, torts, and the sports industry.

His recent papers include publications in the North Carolina Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Georgia Law Review, Washington and Lee Law Review, BYU Law Review, and the Boston University Law Review. He wrote a Torts casebook published by Wolters Kluwer in 2020. In 2011, Professor Rapp testified before the U.S. Congress on the topic of Dodd-Frank whistleblower bounties.

Professor Rapp earned an A.B. Phi Beta Kappa in Economics from Harvard College (1998) and a J.D. from the Yale Law School (2001). While in law school, he served as a Notes Editor of the Yale Law Journal and a Teaching Fellow and Head Teaching Fellow in the Departments of Economics and Computer Science.

Before entering law teaching, he clerked for Judge Cornelia Kennedy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and worked in private practice.

Professor Rapp has been frequently interviewed and quoted by local, national, and international media, including National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, CBS Sports, The New York Times, USA Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, The LA Times, The New York Post, Business Week, Forbes, The Guardian (UK), The Toronto Star, Toronto’s National Post, BBC Radio, The Washington Post,The Christian Science Monitor, Scout.com, The Toledo Blade, and The Washington Times.

He has served on six ABA Site Visit Teams, twice as a chair and three times as both a site team member and the AALS reporter. He was the Chair of the AALS Section on Associate Deans for Academic Affairs and Research in 2019, and served as Chair-elect in 2018, on the Section's Executive Committee in 2017, and its Planning and Nomination Committee in 2016; he also serves on the LSAC's Assessments Committee and served on its Finance and Legal Affairs Committee from 2017-2019, and was a member of the the 2018 AALS Annual Meeting Program Committee.

Professor Rapp is licensed to practice law in New York, Illinois, and Ohio.


Courses Taught

Torts
Business Associations
Products Liability
Securities Regulation
Trusts & Estates
Antitrust
Sports Law


Recent Publications

LGBTQ+ Rights, Anti-Homophobia and Tort Law Five Years after Obergefell, University of Illinois Law Review (forthcoming 2022)

TORT LAW IN FOCUS (Wolters Kluwer 2020)

Sports Medicine Delivery Models: Legal Risks, 53 Journal of Athletic Training 1237 (2019) (with Chris Ingersoll)

Institutional Control and Corporate Governance, 2015 BYU Law Review 985 (2016)

Does the Public Care How the Supreme Court Reasons? Empirical Evidence from a National Experiment and Normative Concerns in the Case of Same-Sex Marriage, 93 North Carolina Law Review 303 (2015) (with Courtney Cahill, FSU)

CAREERS IN SPORTS LAW (ABA 2015) (with Marc Edelman, CUNY)

Mutiny by the Bounties? The Attempt to Reform Wall Street by the New Whistleblower Provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, 2012 BYU Law Review 73

Regulating On-Line Peer-to-Peer Lending in the Aftermath of Dodd-Frank: In Search of an Evolving Regulatory Regime for an Evolving Industry, 69 Washington & Lee Law Review 485 (2012) (with Eric Chaffee)

Defense Against Outrage and the Perils of Parasitic Torts,45 Georgia Law Review 107 (2010)

The Wreckage of Recklessness, 86 Washington University Law Review 111 (2008)

Beyond Protection: Invigorating Incentives for Sarbanes-Oxley Corporate and Securities Fraud Whistleblowers, 87 Boston University Law Review 91 (February 2007)

Last Updated: 7/11/23