Michael S. Barr is the Roy F. and Jean Humphrey Proffitt Professor of Law. A member of the faculty since 2001, he teaches Financial Institutions, International Finance, Financial Derivatives, Transnational Law, and Jurisdiction and Choice of Law, and co-founded the International Transactions Clinic. He was on leave from 2009-2010, serving as the U.S. Department of the Treasury's assistant secretary for financial institutions, and was a key architect of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. He is currently a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution. He is also a professor of public policy at U-M's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

Prof. Barr conducts large-scale empirical research regarding financial services and researches and writes about a wide range of issues in financial regulation. Recent books include No Slack: The Financial Lives of Low-Income Americans (Brookings Press, 2012), Insufficient Funds (Russell Sage, 2009, co-edited with Rebecca Blank), and Building Inclusive Financial Systems (Brookings Press, 2007, co-edited with Anjali Kumar and Robert Litan).

Prof. Barr previously served as Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin's special assistant, as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury, as special adviser to President William J. Clinton, as a special adviser and counselor on the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State, and as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and the Hon. Pierre N. Leval, then of the Southern District of New York.

He received his JD from Yale Law School, his MPhil in international relations as a Rhodes Scholar from Magdalen College, Oxford University, and his BA, summa cum laude, with honors in history, from Yale University.

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