The University of Pittsburgh School of Law has announced the appointment of Professor Peter B. Oh as the W. Edward Sell Chair in Business Law, effective August 1, 2026.
The appointment to a named chair is one of the highest honors a university can bestow upon a faculty member. Professor Oh’s appointment recognizes the quality and impact of his work and the deep and widespread respect it has earned.
The appointment represents an important milestone in Pitt Law’s broader strategic initiative to preserve, strengthen, and expand its portfolio of endowed faculty positions. The Law School’s multi-year effort is designed to create enduring support for distinguished scholarship, excellent teaching, faculty recruitment and retention, and academic leadership in fields central to Pitt Law’s institutional mission.
“Professor Peter Oh is an accomplished and respected scholar in corporate and business law, an outstanding teacher, and a deeply engaged contributor to the intellectual and institutional life of Pitt Law,” said Dean Jerry Dickinson. “His appointment to the W. Edward Sell Endowed Chair in Business Law recognizes the cumulative strength of his scholarship, teaching, service, and national and international professional standing. It also reflects our confidence that Peter’s most important contributions are not behind him and that this chair will support and amplify his continuing work as a scholar, teacher, mentor, and academic leader.”
Dickinson continued: “This appointment also has special institutional significance. The Sell Chair was conceived as Pitt Law’s first fully endowed faculty position and as an important means of supporting exceptional faculty in business law. By formally strengthening the chair and appointing Professor Oh to it, we honor Dean Edward Sell’s remarkable legacy while advancing Pitt Law’s long-term strategy of investing in the scholars and teachers who shape our students, the legal profession, and the development of law.”
“W. Edward Sell is a foundational figure within the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was the Dean of the Law School, with the vision to build the Barco Law Building, and a principal architect of the Pennsylvania Business Corporation Law,” said Professor Oh. “To be appointed to honor Dean Sell’s legacy is a tremendous distinction and privilege. I look forward to building upon and extending the legacy of Dean Sell, within the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and beyond the walls of Barco Law.”
A Distinguished Scholar of Corporate and Business Law
Professor Oh joined the Pitt Law faculty as an associate professor in 2006, received tenure in 2009, and has served as a professor of law since 2014. He was the John E. Murray Faculty Scholar from 2018 through 2020 and has held the title of W. Edward Sell Fellow since 2020. His courses at Pitt Law have included Antitrust, Business Organizations, Corporate Finance, Law and Economics, and Securities Regulation.
Professor Oh’s scholarship focuses principally on corporate and business law, with particular attention to corporate governance and remedies, methods of initial public offerings, veil-piercing, organizational form, and securities regulation. His body of work employs doctrinal, empirical, comparative, and theoretical methods to examine how courts and legal institutions understand corporations and other business organizations.
Among his most prominent publications is “Veil-Piercing,” a comprehensive empirical study of common law decisions involving piercing of the corporate veil, that was published in the Texas Law Review in 2010. The article was later cited by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in Prest v. Petrodel Resources Ltd. His related article, “Veil-Piercing Unbound,” appeared in the Boston University Law Review in 2013.
Professor Oh has also co-authored two empirical studies of corporate disregard in the United Kingdom with Professor Alan Dignam, titled: Disregarding the Salomon Principle: An Empirical Analysis, 1885–2014, published in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies in 2019, and Rationalising Corporate Disregard, published in Legal Studies in 2020. His scholarship has additionally appeared in the Wake Forest Law Review, Tulane Law Review, Journal of Corporation Law, Rutgers Law Review, and other journals and scholarly volumes.
His article The Dutch Auction Myth, published in the Wake Forest Law Review, was reprinted in the Securities Law Review after being selected as one of the top securities-law articles published in 2008. His other work has addressed business trusts, public offerings, gatekeeping, corporate distinctions, and the development and limitation of legal rules.
Professor Oh is also the co-author, with Charles C. Cohen, of Corporate Law and Governance: Principles and Practice, published by Aspen Publishing in 2026.
He has presented his scholarship at academic institutions and conferences in the United States and abroad, including the University of Oxford Faculty of Law, Queen Mary University of London School of Law, Notre Dame Law School, Vanderbilt University Law School, the University of Chicago Law School, and meetings of the Canadian Law and Economics Association, the Midwestern Law and Economics Association, the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, and the Association of American Law Schools. His comparative work on corporate disregard was also presented to Lord Hughes of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in 2016.
A Rigorous Appointment Process
Professor Oh’s appointment followed a multi-stage process that included internal faculty consultation, external scholarly review, a formal recommendation from Dean Jerry Dickinson, and review and approval by university leadership.
The nationally recognized external reviewers emphasized the originality, rigor, and influence of Professor Oh’s corporate-law scholarship, particularly his work on veil-piercing. They also highlighted the comparative and empirical dimensions of his research and its recognition within the United States and internationally.
Excellence in Teaching, Mentorship, and Service
Professor Oh is a two-time recipient of Pitt Law’s Robert T. Harper Excellence in Teaching Award, receiving the honor in 2016 and 2022.
In addition to teaching foundational and advanced courses in Pitt Law’s business-law curriculum, he has served since 2007 as faculty advisor to the Law School’s joint J.D.-M.B.A. programs with the University of Pittsburgh’s Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. He has also served as faculty advisor to the University of Pittsburgh Law Review since 2024.
Professor Oh has contributed to the education and supervision of advanced-degree candidates whose work addresses corporate governance, corporate finance, financial technology, investor protection, private equity, commercial arbitration, and other subjects relating to business and economic activity. His service has also included significant participation in Law School governance and institutional initiatives over many years.
Honoring the Legacy of W. Edward Sell
The chair honors former Dean W. Edward Sell, one of the most important faculty members and academic leaders in Pitt Law’s history.
Sell began teaching at Pitt Law in 1947 after graduating from Yale Law School. He earned his undergraduate degree in economics from Washington & Jefferson College in 1944, graduating magna cum laude. Sell served as dean of Pitt Law from 1966 to 1977 and, at the time of the University’s 2000 announcement concerning the chair, had served as a full-time professor longer than any other person in the Law School’s history.
Sell became known as the “Father of Pennsylvania’s Modern Business Corporation Statute.” He authored several books and scholarly works on corporate law, including the multivolume Pennsylvania Business Corporations, which was regarded as a standard reference in Pennsylvania’s legal community. He received both the Law School’s Excellence-in-Teaching Award and the University’s Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award.
Pitt Law’s recent philanthropic priorities have also focused on advancing the legacy of W. Edward Sell by building a broader and more durable platform for excellence in business law, banking, financial regulation, corporate governance, and antitrust.
The restoration of the Sell Chair and Professor Oh’s appointment are central to that strategy, but they are not isolated developments. Rather, they are part of a coordinated effort to pair endowed faculty support with substantial new philanthropic investments that expand research, teaching, experiential learning, student opportunity, and engagement with the practicing bar and business community.
That effort includes a $1 million commitment from alumnus Greg Jordan (JD ’84) and Ellen Jordan to establish the Greg and Ellen Jordan Fund for Business, Banking and Financial Regulation. The fund supports a range of strategic initiatives, including an annual speaker series, innovative programming, faculty hiring, externships, research, and curriculum development in corporate and business law, banking, and financial regulation. Jordan’s distinguished career—including his leadership as global managing partner of Reed Smith, general counsel and chief administrative officer of PNC Financial Services Group, and chair of the Highmark Health Board of Directors—reflects the close relationship among Pitt Law, Pittsburgh’s leading institutions, and the fields that Dean Sell helped develop at the Law School.
Pitt Law has further strengthened this area in 2026 through the establishment of the Brockett Fund by distinguished alumnus Daniel L. Brockett (JD ’82), chair of the Financial Institution Litigation practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP. The Brockett Fund supports initiatives that include experiential learning opportunities, student scholarships, speaker series, and research in antitrust, corporate and business law, and financial regulation.
Together, the Sell Chair, the Jordan Fund, and the Brockett Fund represent a renewed institutional commitment to the field that defined so much of Dean Sell’s career—connecting nationally significant scholarship and teaching with the evolving needs of students, lawyers, businesses, financial institutions, and the broader economy.
Carrying on a Legacy
Professor Oh’s appointment now carries forward the original purpose of the endowment: to recognize and support a distinguished member of the faculty in business law while providing Pitt Law with an important resource for scholarly excellence and faculty retention.
“Endowed chairs are essential components of the permanent academic infrastructure of a leading law school,” Dickinson said. “They allow us to recognize excellence, sustain consequential scholarship, support outstanding teaching, and invest in the long-term strength and reputation of our faculty. Professor Oh’s appointment both honors the historic purpose of the Sell Chair and demonstrates Pitt Law’s commitment to making endowed faculty positions a central part of our institutional future.”
Professor Oh’s appointment as the W. Edward Sell Chair in Business Law was effective August 1, 2026.