Courses Offered:

Antitrust
Communications Law
Criminal Procedure
Business Crime

Professional Biographical Information:

James F. Ponsoldt joined the University of Georgia School of Law faculty in 1978 and was appointed as the Joseph Henry Lumpkin Professor of Law in 1997. He specializes in the areas of antitrust, corporations, criminal procedure and communications law.

His recent scholarship includes "Entrapment When the Spoken Word is the Crime" in Fordham Law Review (with Stephen Marsh), "The Judicial Legitimization of Horizontal Price-fixing among Partially Integrated Heath Care Providers: An Antitrust/Health Care Case Study" in the Alabama Law Review (with Lance McMillian) and "Refusals to Deal in 'Locked-in' Health Care Markets" in the Utah Law Review.

Ponsoldt has extensive experience in litigation involving antitrust and criminal law enforcement, including being senior trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice during the Ford and Carter administrations. After private practice in New York and Washington, D.C., he served as appellate counsel for the Justice Department in United States v. AT&T, which ultimately resulted in the consent agreement breaking up the communications monopoly. In addition, he served as counsel in the 1980s when UGA and the University of Oklahoma brought suit against the NCAA, resulting in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that NCAA regulations limiting college football television rights constituted an antitrust violation (NCAA v. Board of Regents). Ponsoldt also represented a group of UGA law school graduates in Palmer v. BRG of Georgia, a class action suit claiming that certain bar review publications violated antitrust legislation. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the students' favor, resulting in the cost reduction of bar review courses and more competition in the area. More recently, he has consulted for several public corporations and their boards of directors regarding corporate governance issues in the wake of Wall Street scandals.

During the past 20 years, Ponsoldt has contributed numerous editorials to The New York Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and local publications on a variety of legal and social policy issues. He has been interviewed by the Fox National News Network, National Public Radio, The Christian Science Monitor and many other media outlets.

Ponsoldt has testified on antitrust matters before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and the Georgia Public Service Commission. He frequently serves as a legal consultant, keynote speaker and lecturer, and has made presentations to the Georgia General Assembly, National League of Cities and Brussels (Belgium) Bar Association. Additionally, he was elected to a four-year term on the Athens-Clarke County Board of Education in 1999.

Ponsoldt earned his bachelor's degree from Cornell University and received a fellowship for graduate work at Brandeis. He then earned his law degree from Harvard University. Ponsoldt has served as a visiting professor at Tulane and Cardozo law schools. Most recently, for the second time, he lectured on competition law at the University Jean Moulin (Lyon) in France and produced a film, "Junebug and Hurricane," regarding spouse abuse, which was an official selection of the Toronto, Seattle, Atlanta, Nantucket, Palm Springs and other film festivals.