Oren Bar-Gill will rejoin the School of Law faculty as Professor of Law with tenure, beginning in the 2025–26 academic year. Bar-Gill comes to Law from Harvard Law School, where he holds the William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professorship of Law and Economics. From 2005 to 2014, Bar-Gill taught at Law, holding the Evelyn and Harold Meltzer Professorship of Law and Economics.
“Oren is one of the foremost scholars in law and economics, whose groundbreaking work has significantly advanced our understanding of contracts and consumer markets,” Dean ’00 said in announcing Bar-Gill’s arrival. “His return to will further strengthen the expertise of our private law group and enrich our entire community with his scholarship, teaching, and collaborative spirit.”
Bar-Gill’s pioneering research explores how bounded rationality and cognitive biases shape contractual decision-making, particularly in consumer markets. His influential book, Seduction by Contract: Law, Economics, and Psychology in Consumer Markets, is regarded as a landmark contribution to the field. An accomplished teacher, Bar-Gill has been frequently praised by students for his clarity, insight, and passion. This past fall, while visiting at , he presented a chapter from his forthcoming book, Algorithmic Harm: Protecting People in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, co-authored with Cass Sunstein.
Oren holds a BA in economics, an LLB, an MA in law and economics, and a PhD in economics from Tel Aviv University, as well as an LLM and an SJD from Harvard Law School. Among his many honors, he is a recipient of the American Law Institute’s Young Scholars Medal and the American Law and Economics Review’s Best Paper Prize for a paper that he co-authored with , Beller Family Professor of Business Law.
Posted January 7, 2025. Photo: Jessica Scranton