Athens, Ga. — Legal studies professor O. Lee Reed has been appointed to the Robert W. Scherer Chair in Public Affairs at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business.
Reed joined the business law faculty in 1972. He also holds a UGA appointment as a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor resulting from his 1996 selection for the Meigs Award, the university’s top teaching honor.
“Lee is an excellent researcher, a popular classroom teacher and is very highly regarded in the legal studies field. It’s entirely likely he has taught more students than anyone else in the history of the Terry College — almost 30,000,” said Robert T. Sumichrast, dean of the Terry College of Business. “I am pleased the Board of Regents has approved his appointment to the Scherer Chair.”
Reed is a co-author of the past 11 editions of the textbook The Legal and Regulatory Environment of Business, going back to 1977. For the latest edition of the textbook, he shared the co-authorship with Terry College faculty colleagues Peter J. Shedd, Jere W. Morehead and Marisa Anne Pagnattaro.
The book, first published in 1963 by Robert N. Corley, established a new course of study emphasizing the legal environment in which business is conducted. By focusing on the public nature of how government regulates business activities, rather than simply how businesses privately make transactions, the book triggered the movement away from the traditional study of business law and set the standard for materials covered in an introductory course on the legal and regulatory environment of business.
Reed also has served as editor-in-chief of the field’s leading research periodical, American Business Law Journal, and spent eight years on the publication’s editorial board. He has been president of the international Academy of Legal Studies in Business and in 1995 was presented the Senior Faculty Award for Excellence, which is the academy’s highest career achievement award.
As a researcher, Reed has been named the recipient of the annual Ralph C. Hober Award for Excellence in Research for work appearing in the American Business Law Journal on three different occasions. Currently, his research involves property theory, and in 1996 he gave a keynote address at a celebration of World Intellectual Property Day. He also made an invited presentation to the five commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission and presently sits on the national advisory board of the Institute for Trade, Standards and Sustainable Development.
Reed is a graduate of Birmingham-Southern College, where he studied history and political science, and went on to the University of Chicago, where he earned a Doctor of Law degree.
Reed is the second professor to hold the Scherer Chair, succeeding management professor Archie Carroll, who was the chair-holder from its inception in 1986 until his retirement in 2005. The endowment funding the chair was established by Georgia Power Co. in 1983.
