From his earliest days, Alan Sykes remembers having a proclivity toward “debate and argumentation,” two activities he has spent more than 20 years successfully building a career around. For Sykes, it was only natural that this interest led him to become a lawyer.

Also interested in economics, Sykes was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at Yale from 1976 to 1979, which is when he started to look at the application of economics to legal problems. He received both his JD and PhD in economics from Yale.

Sykes began his career as an associate with the Washington, D.C., law firm of Arnold & Porter and in 1986 began his academic career at the University of Chicago Law School, where he was named the Frank & Bernice Greenberg Professor of Law in 1990 and faculty director for curriculum in 2001.

Now joining the Stanford Law School faculty as a professor of law, Sykes’s research and teaching interests include international trade, torts, contracts, insurance, antitrust, and economic analysis of law. He said he’s looking forward to “taking advantage of the increased activity at Stanford Law School in international economic relations,” his specialized field. In his new role, Sykes hopes “to build student interest in economic law” and “to take part in an interdisciplinary teaching program in conjunction with the economics department.”

“There are an increased number of treaties and arrangements under the auspices of the World Trade Organization and various regional trade arrangements, augmented by more and more new investment agreements and disputes,” said Sykes. “There is a lot happening in this field right now.”