Ramseyer Joins Faculty as Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies at HLS

J. Mark Ramseyer has been appointed as Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies at the Law School. Ramseyer, a University of Chicago Law School professor, will join the faculty in fall 1998.

"Professor Ramseyer is a magnificent scholar and teacher," said Dean Robert Clark. "His work in Japanese law will add immeasurably to the scope and depth of our Program in East Asian Legal Studies and international legal studies generally."

"There's lots of exciting work going on at the Harvard Law School," said Ramseyer. "It's a delight and an honor to be part of the place. In addition, Harvard University has a long history of fostering pathbreaking research related to Japan. I hope I can contribute."

"Professor Ramseyer will be a marvelous addition to the Harvard Law School faculty," said Professor William Alford, director of the School's East Asian Legal Studies Program, one of the oldest and largest programs in the country for the study of the legal cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. "He truly is a scholar of world-class proportions as evidenced by the ways in which his writings have transformed the debate both here and abroad about the nature of law in Japanese society. His presence will ensure that Harvard continues to have the best program in the world concerning international, comparative, and foreign law."

The Mitsubishi Group of Japan's affiliation with the Law School dates to 1972 when the company donated $1 million to establish the professorship. The gift, unusual for a Japanese corporate group at that time, was made on the 50th anniversary of a similar gift to Tokyo University Law School for American Studies by A. Barton Hepburn, an American businessman. The Mitsubishi Group is one of the largest corporate entities in the world.

At Chicago Ramseyer is coeditor of the Journal of Legal Studies and Studies in Law and Economics (a book series with the University of Chicago Press) and served as chair of the University's Committee on Japanese Studies.

Ramseyer's several books include Odd Markets in Japanese History: Law and Economic Growth (an exploration of the impact of law on various markets in Japanese history and the effect that those markets had on economic growth), Law and Investment in Japan: Cases and Materials (with Yukio Yanagida, et. al., eds.), Japan's Political Marketplace (an application of rational-choice theory to Japanese politics), and The Politics of Oligarchy: Institutional Choice in Imperial Japan (both with Frances McCall Rosenbluth). The Politics of Oligarchy was awarded the Luebbert Award for the best book in comparative politics at the 1997 meetings of the American Political Science Association.

His scholarly essays include "Products Liability through Private Ordering: Notes on a Japanese Experiment," University of Pennsylvania Law Review; "Those Japanese Firms with their Disdain for Shareholders: Another Fable for the Academy," (with Steven N. Kaplan), Washington University Law Quarterly; and "The Market for Children: Evidence from Early Modern Japan," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations.

Ramseyer frequently gives presentations in both Japanese and English, and has given presentations recently at Hitosubashi, Waseda, and Tokyo universities in Japan and at the law schools of the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Virginia.

Ramseyer received his J.D. magna cum laude in 1982 from Harvard Law School, where he was on the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review and received a National Resource Fellowship (1980-81) and a Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship (1981-82). He received his B.A. in history in 1976 from Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana, and his A.M. in Japanese studies in 1978 from the University of Michigan. Ramseyer was a Fulbright fellow at the law faculty of the University of Tokyo from 1985 to 1986.

He was a Harvard Law School visiting professor in 1991 and has been a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, an Associate with Sidley & Austin in Chicago, and an adjunct instructor of law at Tohoku University and Hitotsubashi University.