Andrea Tosato to Join SMU Law Faculty
Professor Andrea Tosato is a leading private law scholar with internationally recognized expertise in the intersection between commercial law and new technologies. In the United States, he serves as the Associate Research Director of the Permanent Editorial Board of the Uniform Commercial Code; he is also the Chair of the Sub-Committee for UCC and Emerging Technologies of the American Bar Association Business Law Section. In the United Kingdom, he has advised the Law Commission of England & Wales on its secured transactions and digital assets initiatives. Internationally, he regularly serves as an expert advisor to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Laws (UNCITRAL) and the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT).
At present, Professor Tosato is engaged in several international legislative reform projects dealing with the impact of blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies on commercial law. In the United States, he was a key contributor to the ULC/ALI Uniform Commercial Code and Emerging Technologies Committee that drafted the 2022 Amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code and Article 12. He is also a member of the ULC Committee working on the enactment of these new laws across the United States. At Unidroit, he is a member of the Drafting Committee of Unidroit Working Group on Digital Assets and Private Law and a member of the Unidroit Working Group developing a Model Law on Warehouse Receipts.
Professor Tosato’s research has been published in leading law journals, has received international awards, and has been cited by courts in several jurisdictions. In Europe, his articles have appeared in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, European Law Journal, and Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly. In the United States, his articles have been published in the Pennsylvania Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Arizona State Law Journal, Boston University Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, Indiana Law Journal, and Law & Contemporary Problems.
Notably, his recent paper “The Private Law of Stablecoins” (with Kara Bruce and Christopher Odinet) was awarded the Grant Gilmore Award of the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers in recognition of “superior writing in the field of commercial finance law.
Professor Tosato read Law at the University of Pavia (Italy) before pursuing graduate studies at the University of Cambridge, receiving his LL.M. in 2008. He subsequently returned to the University of Pavia, obtaining his Ph.D. in 2010.
Professor Tosato is currently a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and is also an Associate Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Nottingham School of Law.
He will join the faculty at SMU Dedman School of Law as Professor of Law in fall 2024.