Born in New London, Connecticut in 1951, Mark A. Sargent was educated at Wesleyan University, where he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in the College of Letters in 1973. Awarded a Danforth Fellowship for graduate study in 1973, he earned an M.A. in Medieval Studies in 1975 from Cornell University, where he concentrated in political theory and Italian literature. He entered Cornell Law School in 1975, graduating in 1978, and went on to practice corporate and securities law with the Boston law firm of Csaplar & Bok. He began his law teaching career in 1980, and is currently Dean and Professor of Law at Villanova University School of Law. Before coming to Villanova in 1997, he was Piper & Marbury Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Director of the Law & Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Maryland School of Law. He has also taught at the law schools of American University, Southern Methodist University and the University of Baltimore. Dean Sargent’s legal specialties are securities regulation and corporate law, and he has published extensively in those fields. Among his distinctions in his areas of expertise are his appointments as a member of the American Law Institute, as Reporter for the Revision of the Uniform Securities Act for the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, as Editor of The Business Lawyer, and as a former member of the National Adjudicatory Council of the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc., the national self-regulatory organization for the brokerage industry. He also has served as an arbitrator in securities and corporate law disputes, an administrative hearing judge in state securities enforcement actions and an expert witness for the Securities and Exchange Commission, state securities regulators and private litigants. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Villanova Journal of Law and Investment Management, a peer-reviewed journal he founded in 1997. Dean Sargent has served on the boards of community organizations as well as business entities, and has assumed leadership roles in bar activities at both the national and the state levels. While at the University of Maryland, he chaired a successful search committee for the presidency of a major research university and served in leadership capacities at both the campus and inter-campus levels. In addition to teaching courses in securities regulation, business associations, mergers & acquisitions, corporate and white collar crime and related topics, he has taught law school courses in American legal history, which he studied as a participant in a National Endowment for the Humanities program at Stanford Law School. He also has been long active in creating clinical law and pro bono service programs in various aspects of poverty and human rights law at both Villanova and the University of Maryland. His current research and teaching interests are principally in the area of Catholic Social Thought and the law. Dean Sargent is married to Joan Taranto Sargent, also an attorney, and has one son, Alexander (born 1987).
Articles
Utility, The Good and Civic Happiness: A Catholic Critique of Law and Economics, Villanova University Legal Working Paper Series (2005)
This paper contrasts the value maximization norm of welfare economics that is central to law...
Competing Visions of the Corporation in Catholic Social Thought, Villanova University Legal Working Paper Series (2004)
Catholic Social Thought (CST) is coherent body of principles concerning the organization of social and...
Lawyers in the Moral Maze , Villanova University Legal Working Paper Series (2004)
This article overviews the various forms of lawyer complicity in illegal or immoral behavior by...
Lawyers in the Perfect Storm, Villanova University Legal Working Paper Series (2003)
The multiple corporate collapses and scandals of recent years, for which "Enron" is a convenient...
Book Reviews
"In Praise of Ambivalence," review of Robert A. Burt, "Death is That Man Taking Names", Commonweal (2003)