In 2021, he was elected to be a fellow of the American College of Consumer Financial Lawyers after spending a year as the chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Consumer Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law. In 2009, he was the recipient of the Institute for Humane Studies 2009 Charles G. Koch Outstanding IHS Alum Award. He has served as coeditor of the Supreme Court Economic Review since 2006 and as editor from 2001 to 2002. From 2003 to 2004, Zywicki served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission.
He teaches in the area of bankruptcy, contracts, commercial law, business associations, law and economics, and public choice and the law. Zywicki has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, and Mississippi College School of Law.
Zywicki is the author of more than 70 articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed economics journals. He is one of the Top 50 Most Downloaded Law Authors at the Social Science Research Network, both all time and during the past 12 months. From 2005 to 2009, he was the 11th most-highly cited law professor in the fields of commercial law and bankruptcy and the most frequently cited under the age of 45 (at that time). He has testified several times before Congress on issues of consumer bankruptcy law and consumer credit and is a frequent commentator on legal issues in print and broadcast media, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, Forbes, Nightline, National Review, NBC Nightly News, PBS NewsHour, and many others.
Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, where he practiced bankruptcy and commercial law. He received his JD from the University of Virginia. Zywicki also received an MA in economics from Clemson University and an AB cum Laude with high honors in his major from Dartmouth College.