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Timothy A. Canova

Timothy Canova
Professor of Law and Public Finance
(954) 262-6150 tcanova@nova.edu

Education:

  • J.D., cum laude Georgetown University Law Center, 1988

Tim Canova is a Professor of Law and Public Finance at the NSU Shepard Broad College of Law, with broad experience in law teaching, private practice, and public policy. He teaches Constitutional Law II: First Amendment Law, Corporations, Business Entities, Regulation of Financial Institutions, and a Seminar on Law, Finance, and Markets at Nova. He previously taught at the Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law in Orange, California, where he served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the inaugural Betty Hutton Williams Professor of International Economic Law. He was first granted tenure at the University of New Mexico School of Law and he has taught as a visitor at the University of Arizona and the University of Miami.

Canova's work crosses the disciplines of law, public finance, history, and economics.  His work has been published in more than two dozen book chapters and articles in the U.S. and overseas, including in the Oxford University Press, Edward Elgar Publishing, Harvard Law & Policy ReviewAmerican Journal of Economics and SociologyBrooklyn Law ReviewGeorgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and UC Davis Law Review. Canova was an early critic of financial deregulation and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. In the 1980s, he wrote critically of the federal bailout of Continental Illinois, the nation’s seventh largest commercial bank, and the collapse of the savings & loan industry. In the 1990s, prior to the Asian currency contagion, he argued against the International Monetary Fund’s capital account liberalization program. Throughout the Bush administration, he warned of an impending crisis in the bubble economy. Following the 2008 financial collapse, he lectured and published widely on the causes and consequences of the economic and financial crisis. In 2011, Canova was appointed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to serve on an Advisory Committee on Federal Reserve Reform with leading economists, including Jeffrey Sachs, Robert Reich, James Galbraith, and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

Canova also writes and advocates in the areas of campaign finance and election reform, a research agenda informed by his 2016 campaign challenging the then chair of the Democratic National Committee for her U.S. House of Representatives seat in a hotly contested election. Canova’s campaign went viral, raising $3.8 million from 209,000 individual donations and setting a record at the time for the highest percentage (76%) of small online donations for any campaign for federal office. The election results were marred by evidence of statistical anomalies, allegations of electronic voting irregularities, and an order by Florida’s 17th Judicial Circuit Court finding that the Broward County Elections Supervisor had illegally destroyed every ballot cast. In 2019, Canova testified to the Florida Advisory Committee of the United States Civil Rights Commission about the systematic electronic disenfranchisement of voters in Florida elections.

Canova received his A.B. degree from Franklin and Marshall College and his J.D. degree, cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. He has a master’s diploma in graduate legal studies from the University of Stockholm where he was a Swedish Institute Visiting Scholar.  He previously served as a legislative assistant to the late U.S. Senator Paul E. Tsongas and practiced law in New York City with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon.

Featured Article on the Federal Reserve and global financial crisis: “The Fox, the Henhouse, and the Fed,” in “Moneta e Impero” (Money & Empire), a special volume in Limes: The Italian Journal of Geopolitics (February 23, 2015), republished in English in Heartland: The Eurasian Review of Geopolitics. The volume was the focus of the 2nd Festival of Limes, in Genoa, Italy, from March 6-8, 2015.

Areas of Interest

  • Central Banking and Monetary Policy
  • Regulation of Banking and Financial Services
  • State and Local Government Finances
  • Corporate Governance
  • Constitutional Law and Separation of Powers
  • Pandemic Responses and Vaccine Mandates
  • First Amendment Law
  • Mass Media Concentration
  • Social Media Censorship
  • Campaign Finance and Election Law

SSRNView Selected Works | Curriculum Vitae

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