- Louis Loss
Louis Loss (1914-1997) was a legal scholar considered by many to be the intellectual father of modern
securities law. [http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/01.15/LouisLossEmerit.html Louis Loss, Emeritus Law Professor, Securities Law Specialist, Dies at 83 ] ] He is best known for his treatise "Securities Regulation", which is still considered to be the definitive authority on the subject and which has been cited over 50 times by theSupreme Court of the United States .http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/Cambridge/entries/048/Louis-Loss.html] The Oxford English Dictionary credits him with having coined the word "tippee," to refer to someone who trades stock after getting a tip from a corporate insider. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEED6143FF935A25751C1A961958260 Louis Loss, 83, Dies; Harvard Professor Defined and Interpreted Field of Securities Law - New York Times ] ]Education and career at SEC
Loss graduated from the
University of Pennsylvania (B.S.) in 1934 andYale Law School (LL.B.) in 1937. He was also granted an honorary A.M. fromHarvard University in 1953. Upon his graduation from Yale, Loss joined theSecurities and Exchange Commission , where he served as staff attorney from 1937 to 1944, chief counsel of the Division of Trading and Exchanges from 1944 to 1948, and associate general counsel from 1948 to 1952. While at the SEC, he helped develop the initial theories that enabled the Securities and Exchange Commission to use the broadly worded anti-fraud provisions of the securities law to prosecuteinsider trading , an area not directly addressed by the law itself.Career as a law professor
Loss held part-time teaching positions at Yale Law School and
George Washington University Law School before joining the faculty ofHarvard Law School in 1952. He served as Professor of Law from 1952 to 1962 and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law from 1962 to 1984. During his tenure at Harvard, he was offered the chairmanship of the SEC by PresidentJohn F. Kennedy , but he declined. He became William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law "Emeritus" in 1984. Among his many students at Harvard wereU.S. Supreme Court Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Scalia, and Souter. He served as director of the Harvard Law School Program of Instruction for Lawyers from 1977 to 1984. After his death, Volume 111 #8 of theHarvard Law Review was dedicated to him. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0017-811X(199806)111%3A8%3Cx%3AIMLL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D] Loss' wife, Bernice, served as Curator of the Harvard Law School legal portrait collection.References
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