Full Name
Joshua Macey
Job Title
Professor of Law
Company
Yale Law School
Speaker Bio
Joshua Macey is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Macey teaches and writes about bankruptcy, environmental law, energy law, and the regulation of financial institutions. Macey’s latest work focuses on the fragility of the nation’s electric grid and offers strategies to improve grid reliability and accelerate the transition to new sources of energy.
Professor Macey’s scholarship has won numerous awards. In 2023, the American Bankruptcy Institute named Macey to its list of 40 Under 40 Emerging Leaders in Insolvency Practice. Macey is also the three-time winner of the Morrison Prize — awarded to the “most impactful sustainability-related legal academic paper published in North America during the previous year” (given, respectively, for “Zombie Energy Laws,” 73 Vanderbilt Law Review; “Long Live the Federal Power Act’s Bright Line,” 134 Harvard Law Review; and “Clean Energy Through Grid Reliability,” 74 Stanford Law Review). His paper "Private Profits and Public Business" (103 Texas Law Review) was selected by the Corporate Practice Commentator as one of the Top 10 Corporate and Securities Articles of 2025 and received the 2024 Best Paper Award (junior category) from the 2024 Berkeley Forum on Corporate Governance. His work has also been cited by multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court (see Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, 603 U.S. 204).
Prior to his appointment at Yale Law School, Macey served as an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He served on the University of Chicago Law School’s Journal and Faculty Appointments Committees, as well as the University of Chicago Business Law Review’s Faculty Advisory Board.
From 2019 to 2020, Macey was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. He previously worked at Morgan Stanley and clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Macey also co-authored the sixth edition of the leading energy law casebook, Energy, Economics, and the Environment.
Macey holds a B.A. from Yale College and an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He earned a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served as an Editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Professor Macey’s scholarship has won numerous awards. In 2023, the American Bankruptcy Institute named Macey to its list of 40 Under 40 Emerging Leaders in Insolvency Practice. Macey is also the three-time winner of the Morrison Prize — awarded to the “most impactful sustainability-related legal academic paper published in North America during the previous year” (given, respectively, for “Zombie Energy Laws,” 73 Vanderbilt Law Review; “Long Live the Federal Power Act’s Bright Line,” 134 Harvard Law Review; and “Clean Energy Through Grid Reliability,” 74 Stanford Law Review). His paper "Private Profits and Public Business" (103 Texas Law Review) was selected by the Corporate Practice Commentator as one of the Top 10 Corporate and Securities Articles of 2025 and received the 2024 Best Paper Award (junior category) from the 2024 Berkeley Forum on Corporate Governance. His work has also been cited by multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court (see Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, 603 U.S. 204).
Prior to his appointment at Yale Law School, Macey served as an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He served on the University of Chicago Law School’s Journal and Faculty Appointments Committees, as well as the University of Chicago Business Law Review’s Faculty Advisory Board.
From 2019 to 2020, Macey was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. He previously worked at Morgan Stanley and clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Macey also co-authored the sixth edition of the leading energy law casebook, Energy, Economics, and the Environment.
Macey holds a B.A. from Yale College and an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He earned a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served as an Editor of the Yale Law Journal.
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