Fred McChesney

Fred Sanderson McChesney (November 19, 1948 – October 12, 2017) was an American legal scholar known for his contributions to public choice economics. He was the de la Cruz-Mentschikoff Endowed Chair in Law and Economics at the University of Miami and the James B. Haddad Chair Professor of Law at Northwestern University.

Early life and education McChesney was born on November 19, 1948, in Washington, D.C., and was raised in Montgomery County, Maryland. After finishing high school at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in 1966, he graduated from the College of the Holy Cross with a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in history in 1970. He then earned his Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Miami School of Law in 1978 and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Virginia in 1982. His doctoral dissertation was titled, "Production, promotion and the advertising ban in the legal profession."

Career After receiving his doctorate, McChesney became an official in the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) responsible for matters relating to the distribution of cigarettes. He then was the Robert T. Thompson Professor of Law and Business at the Emory University School of Law from 1982 to 1997, a professor at Cornell Law School from 1997 to 1999, the James B. Haddad Chair Professor at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law from 1999 to 2011, and the inaugural de la Cruz-Mentschikoff Endowed Chair in Law and Economics at the University of Miami School of Law from 2011 until his death.

Selected publications

Books