S. Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate Law

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“Getting a chair is a major milestone, “says Skeel, who is entering his sixth year at Penn Law. “I would have been thrilled with any chair but I was particularly thrilled with this one.”

The incorporation, so to speak, makes sense on many levels. Skeel’s uncle was an attorney at Arsht’s Delaware law firm – Morris Nichols Arsht & Tunnell; he clerked for Third Circuit Senior Judge Walter Stapleton, an Arsht protégé; Skeel’s parents grew up in Wilmington; and, finally, most important, Skeel is a scholar in corporate law and bankruptcy, which he teaches.

An English major at the University of North Carolina, Skeel combines storytelling and doctrine in his work. His upcoming book draws on Greek mythology for its title. The Icarus Effect: The Fundamental Flaws in Corporate America and Where They Came From (Oxford University Press), due this fall, looks at recent corporate scandals through the prism of past malfeasance and the regulations that necessarily followed. Similarly, one of the cases he uses in his bankruptcy class contains lines from T.S. Eliot’s epic poem, “The Wasteland.” Skeel, himself a published poet, says he’s always seen a link between law and literature.