James Fanto

Biography

James A. Fanto is the Gerald Baylin Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School and Co-Director of the school’s Center for the Study of Business Law & Regulation. He teaches courses on banking, compliance, corporations, securities law, and corporate finance. He currently writes, speaks, and consults on legal matters relating to business organizations, broker-dealers, compliance, and securities regulation. He is the author of numerous articles and books, most recently Broker-Dealer Compliance: A Case-Based Guide to Compliance Program Elements and Practices (Edward Elgar, 2023), Understanding Corporate Law (Carolina Academic Press, 6th ed. 2023, with Arthur Pinto) and Broker-Dealer Law and Regulation (Wolters Kluwer, 5th ed. 2019, annually updated, with Jill Gross). He is an editor and co-founder of Corporate and Financial Law: Interdisciplinary Approaches, an electronic journal in the Social Science Research Network. Professor Fanto also teaches at the FINRA Institute at Georgetown Certified Regulatory and Compliance Professional (CRCP) program, held at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, on such topics as broker-dealer advertising, Regulation Best Interest, books and records obligations, financial regulation, and supervision. He is an associate reporter for the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law: Compliance and Enforcement for Organizations. Before becoming a law professor, he practiced banking, corporate, and securities law with the law firm of Davis Polk in Washington, Paris, and New York. Professor Fanto received his B.A. (English) from the University of Notre Dame, his M.A. and Ph.D. (Comparative Literature) from the University of Michigan, and his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a law clerk to Judge Louis H. Pollak of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and to Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court.