William Magnuson

William Magnuson is a professor at Texas A&M Law School, where he teaches and writes about corporations, technology and finance. Prior to joining Texas A&M, he taught law at Harvard, worked as an associate in the mergers & acquisitions group of Sullivan & Cromwell in New York, and served as a journalist in the Rome bureau of the Washington Post. He holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, an M.A. in European Integration from the University of Padua, and a B.A., magna cum laude, from Princeton University.

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His book, For Profit: A History of Corporations, provides a sweeping history of corporations, from Ancient Rome to Silicon Valley. The book argues that the original purpose of corporations was a noble one. From their beginnings in the Roman Republic, corporations have been designed to promote the common good. By recapturing this spirit of civic virtue, the book argues, corporations can help craft a society in which all of us — not just shareholders — benefit from the profits of enterprise. The book was named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist and the Financial Times.

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William is also the author of Blockchain Democracy: Technology, Law and the Rule of the Crowd and has written for numerous leading publications, including Harvard Business Law Review, the Stanford Journal of Law, Business and Finance, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Bloomberg.