Zywicki attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1988 with a Bachelor of Arts degree cum Laude with High Honors in U.S. Government.

[3] Prior to teaching at George Mason University, Zywicki taught at the Mississippi College School of Law, where he held a faculty position from 1996 to 1998.

He is chair of the academic advisory council of the Bill of Rights Institute, the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum in Chicago[5] as well as the forthcoming film, "We The People in IMAX".

In 2005, he wrote at The Volokh Conspiracy that "the growth in subprime lending is not creating overwhelming debt burdens for low-income households.

"[11] During the run-up to the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA), a law that was heavily lobbied for by the financial services industry and that made it more difficult for consumers to discharge their credit card debts in bankruptcy, Professor Zywicki testified before Congress that the law was likely to reduce the costs of debt to all borrowers by reducing losses to credit card lenders: [W]hen creditors are unable to collect debts because of bankruptcy, some of those losses are inevitably passed on to responsible Americans who live up to their financial obligations.

Professor Zywicki's positions have been challenged by financial engineers and legal scholars, including an economist whose work he has cited.

[15] Zywicki clerked for Judge Jerry Edwin Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and worked as an associate at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, where he practiced bankruptcy law.

Zywicki was a leading supporter of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which was enacted in 2005 with substantial bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress.

Zywicki responded that the quote was taken out of context, saying his comment referred to whether the bill had become obsolete after having been drafted eight years earlier, and not to whether it had technical glitches.

In a column in The Wall Street Journal in December 2008, Zywicki criticized proposals to bail out the American auto industry, arguing that they should file Chapter 11 instead.

In a column in The Wall Street Journal in February 2009, Zywicki criticized proposals to permit bankruptcy judges to modify mortgage contracts.

Zywicki has been a prominent critic of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Senator Elizabeth Warren, who had promoted the creation of the agency.