Faculty & Staff >> Biography

Eric Orts is the Guardsmark Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a professor in the Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department with a joint appointment in the Management Department. He directs the Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL) at Penn/Wharton. He serves also as an academic co-director of the FINRA at Wharton certificate program for securities compliance and regulatory professionals. His primary research and teaching interests are in environmental law and policy, corporate governance, and professional ethics. His scholarly work is widely published in academic journals (mostly law reviews) and books.

Prior to joining Wharton's faculty in 1991, Orts practiced law at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York City and was a Chemical Bank fellow in corporate social responsibility at Columbia Law School. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and visited at the UCLA School of Law, University of Michigan Law School, Tsinghua University, Sydney Law School, and NYU School of Law. He has also been visiting Fulbright professor in the law department of the University of Leuven, the Eugene P. Beard Faculty Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Ethics and the Professions, and a faculty fellow in the Center for Business and Government at the Kennedy School at Harvard.

Orts is a graduate of Oberlin College (BA), the New School for Social Research (MA), the University of Michigan (JD), and Columbia University (JSD). He is a member of the bar of New York and the District of Columbia, an elected member of the American Law Institute, and belongs to a number of other professional and academic associations.

At Wharton, he teaches undergraduate and MBA courses in environmental management and policy, corporate law and governance, introduction to law, and professional ethics. In addition to the FINRA at Wharton program, he has taught in a number of executive education programs, including, the Directors’ Institute (in Philadelphia, London, and San Diego), the International Forum (in Philadelphia, Bruges, and Kyoto), the Investment Management Consultants’ Association, and various custom programs for companies.