Ph.D. Princeton University (Politics) (In Progress)
M.A. Princeton University (Politics) (2023)
J.D. Columbia Law School (2017)
B.A. Middlebury College (Philosophy & Theatre) (2011)
Corporations
Securities Regulation
Financial Institutions
Law and Politics
Legislation and Regulation
Quantitative Methods
Formal Theory
Reilly Steel is an Academic Fellow and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School and a Postgraduate Research Fellow at the Law School’s Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership. Broadly, his research uses tools from the social sciences to study the strategic interactions between economic, legal, and political actors in both private and public institutions, focusing on the intersection between business, law, and politics. He is also a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Princeton University.
Between law school and graduate school, Steel was an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, a law clerk to Chief Justice Leo E. Strine, Jr. at the Delaware Supreme Court, and the inaugural Millstein Public Service Fellow with the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
His research has been published or is forthcoming in the Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Iowa Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, and Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law.
Steel received his J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was an Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review.
Political Threads in Legal Tapestry: A Computational Analysis of Executive Branch Legal Interpretation, 1934–2022, 27 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law (forthcoming 2025) [Paper]
Partisan Bias in Securities Enforcement, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization (2024) [Paper] [Replication Data]
Barbarians Inside the Gates: Raiders, Activists, and the Risk of Mistargeting, 132 Yale Law Journal 326 (2022) (with Zohar Goshen) [Paper]
Caremark and ESG, Perfect Together: A Practical Approach to Implementing an Integrated, Efficient, and Effective Caremark and EESG Strategy, 106 Iowa Law Review 1885 (2021) (with Leo E. Strine, Jr. and Kirby M. Smith) [Paper]
Proxy Access and Optimal Standardization in Corporate Governance: An Empirical Analysis, 23 Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law 173 (2017) [Paper]
Note, The Underground Rulification of the Ordinary Business Operations Exclusion, 116 Columbia Law Review 1547 (2016) [Paper]
“Electoral Competition with Targeted Voting Costs” (with Gleason Judd and Greg Sasso) [Paper]
“The Political Transformation of Corporate America, 2001–2022” [Paper] [BoardEx-DIME Crosswalk]
“Lobbying Against Enforcement” [Paper]