Kenneth Davis
Dean
E-mail: kbdavis@wisc.edu
Telephone: 262-0962
Office: Room 5211A, Law School
Education:
J.D., Case Western Reserve University Law School
Teaching Areas:
Business Organizations/Corporations
Securities Regulation
Biography
Kenneth B. Davis, Jr. was named Dean of the UW Law School in December 1997. He has a background in both legal practice and legal education.
Davis was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1947. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan, and earned his J.D. degree at the Case Western Reserve Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Case Western Reserve Law Review and ranked first in his class throughout all three years.
After his law school graduation in 1974, he worked for one year as clerk for Chief Judge Richard H. Chambers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco. His next career move took him to the East Coast, where he was an attorney with the firm of Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. for three years.
In 1978, Davis came to Madison to join the UW Law faculty. In recognition of his excellence in teaching, he has won both the University's and the Law School's Distinguished Teaching Awards. His specialties in teaching include Business Organizations and Securities Regulation.
In 1996, Davis was named Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and continued to serve in this capacity when he was also chosen Interim Dean upon the resignation of former Dean Daniel O. Bernstine in July 1997. Also in 1997 he was named the James E. and Ruth B. Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law. In 2003, he was awarded the George H. Young Chair.
Three times during his career at UW he has served as a visiting professor at other law schools: at U.C.L.A., the University of Pennsylvania, and Case Western Reserve. He is a co-founder of the UW Law School's popular Summer Program in United States Law and Legal Institutions (an annual five-week program for foreign lawyers, for which he has been a faculty member since 1983). In other community-oriented service, he has been a speaker at various continuing legal education programs in the areas of corporate and securities law.
During his tenure on the Law School faculty, Davis has been an active participant in workon several committees of the American Bar Association's Section of Business Law: the Corporate Laws Committee (serving as Chair of the Task Force on Interested Director Transactions); Federal Regulation of Securities Committee; Legal Education Committee; and U.C.C. Committee's Subcommittee on Investment Securities. In the Wisconsin Law School tradition, he has also made significant contributions to the state's legal system. As co-reporter of the State Bar of Wisconsin's Corporate and Business Law Committee from 1985 to 1996, he helped draft the complete revision of the Wisconsin Business Corporation Law, enacted in April 1990. In June 1990, he received the President's Award of Excellence from the State Bar of Wisconsin.
In addition to his book Wisconsin Business Corporation Law (co-authored with Berry, DeGuire and Williams), Dean Davis has published numerous articles of legal scholarship.
