Jacob Russell

Jacob Hale Russell's scholarship examines how claims of technical expertise frequently mask contested value judgments, and how intellectual paradigms reshape institutions in unexpected ways. His work on public policy demonstrates that supposedly neutral interventions require the making the very political and moral choices their proponents claim to avoid. At Rutgers, he teaches courses on business law, capital markets, populism, and the history of the corporation. He previously taught at Stanford Law School and joined Rutgers Law School in 2016.

His new book, The Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism, co-authored with Dennis Patterson, explores how the misuse and misrepresentation of expertise has corroded public policy and inflamed populists. The New Yorker named Weaponization a best book of the year for 2025.

Jacob Hale Russell's research website

Jacob's scholarship spans corporate governance, consumer finance, fiduciary law, nonprofit organizations, and the role of expertise in policy. Past work has examined how the contractarian revolution transformed nonprofit law alongside corporate governance, identified contemporary trends in contract law's unconscionability doctrine, and critiqued the unexamined consequences of the move towards "libertarian paternalism" in retirement savings and consumer contracts. He has examined how fiduciary duties function across corporate, nonprofit, and investment contexts, and he is co-editor, with Arthur Laby, of Fiduciary Obligations in Business, published by Cambridge University Press in 2021. More recent work focuses on elite culture and institutional design, including universities' role in contested social issues and the importance of institutional neutrality. Methodologically, he draws on interdisciplinary approaches to the study of law, policy, and institutions, spanning political science, economics, and history.

Jacob's courses include Business Organizations, Securities Regulation, Advanced Business Organizations: Alternative Entities (co-taught with Vice Chancellor Travis Laster of the Delaware Court of Chancery), Populism and the Law (co-taught with Dennis Patterson) and the Modern Corporation and Capitalism (a seminar on the history and political economy of the American corporation). He is a faculty affiliate of the Rutgers Center for Corporate Law and Governance. 

Jacob received his J.D. from Stanford Law School, a master’s degree in political science from M.I.T., and his A.B. from Harvard. 

Prior to joining the Rutgers faculty, Jacob was teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School, where he oversaw all aspects of advising, teaching, and admissions for the school's LL.M. Program in Corporate Governance and Practice, and served as an academic fellow at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance. Before law school, Jacob was a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal in New York, covering arts, culture, and philanthropy. He has subsequently worked as editor at large and a freelance reporter for several publications. Following law school, Jacob was an attorney in the financial services group at Goodwin Procter in Boston.

Jacob has served on a variety of non-profit boards. He consults on legal and business issues to start-ups, particularly in the media and technology industries. He is admitted to practice in New Hampshire (inactive) and Massachusetts.