S.J.D., Yale Law School, 1991
LL.M., Yale Law School, 1990
LL.B., Hebrew University, 1987
Corporate Law
Corporate Governance
Securities Regulation
Corporate Finance
Zohar Goshen teaches and writes about corporate law and governance, securities regulation, and corporate finance.
His contributions to corporate law and securities regulation are widely acknowledged and appear in leading publications. Several of his articles were chosen by the Corporate Practice Commentator as part of their Top Ten Best Articles of the Year (based on peer polls): In 2022, his work included the article Barbarians Inside the Gates: Raiders, Activists, and the Risk of Mistargeting (co-authored with Reilly Steel) published in the Yale Law Journal, and Agents of Inequality: Common Ownership And The Decline Of The American Worker (co-authored with Doron Levit) published in the Duke Law Journal; in 2019 for “The Death of Corporate Law” (New York University Law Review), co-authored with Sharon Hannes; in 2017 for “Principal Costs: A New Theory for Corporate Law and Governance” (Columbia Law Review), co-authored with Richard Squire; and in 2016 for “Corporate Control and Idiosyncratic Vision” (Yale Law Journal), co-authored with Assaf Hamdani.
In 2006 and again in 2019, Goshen was awarded the Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching. He is only the third repeat winner of the award, which is given annually by the graduating class.
Goshen brings his practical experience in securities regulation to his scholarship and teaching. From 2008 to 2011 he served as the chairman of the Israel Securities Authority (Israel’s Security and Exchange Commission). In this role, and alongside managing the response to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, he implemented major corporate governance reforms in the Israeli Corporate Law, established a specialized court for corporate law and securities regulations, and added administrative authority to the agency.
Goshen serves on the steering committee for the New Special Study of the Securities Markets, and he is a research member of the European Corporate Governance Institute. He served as a law clerk for Chief Justice Meir Shamgar of the Supreme Court of Israel.
Goshen also is co-director of the Center for Israeli Legal Studies, which hosts visiting Israeli faculty and scholars throughout the year, and has extensive connections in the Israeli legal academy, business community, and bar. The center sponsors lectures, seminars, and conferences.
“I love taking a complex topic and explaining it in a simple way. Nothing is more rewarding than seeing the ‘Aha!’ moment in the students’ eyes.”
Powerful institutional investors are the reason wages have been flat for decades, stifling competition for workers and worsening income inequality, the Columbia Law School professor says.