Jon Hanson

Individual free choice, an idea that permeates common sense and legal theory, assumes that actions reflect the stable preferences of individual actors. Individuals are responsible for their actions (that is, their preference-driven choices), and laws can therefore be designed on that assumption.

The following op-ed written by Professor Jon Hanson, "In crisis, beware illusion of reform," was published in the October 2, 2008, edition of the Providence Journal.

Who Will Bail Out American Families? Professor Elizabeth Warren
Chicago Tribune, Sept. 22, 2008 “Lost in the headlines are the families who signed their names to…

Often, there’s a bond between the donor of a new chair and the scholar who occupies it.

Harvard Law School's corporate law scholars like to collaborate--across a global array of subjects.

An op-ed co-written by Professor Jon Hanson: To sports fans, it probably wasn't a surprise to learn that former Ohio State University football star Maurice Clarett was arrested again the other week. The evasive running back who had carried the Buckeyes to the 2002 National Championship was unsuccessful in evading the police in a car chase that occurred near the home of a witness in his upcoming robbery trial.

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s opponents have seized upon two memorandums he wrote when he was a junior lawyer in the office of the solicitor general....

When Justices William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor left the bench last year, conservatives were in an anxious mood: though pleased at the prospect of shifting the Supreme Court to the right, they were worried by the record of past Republican appointments. The refrain in conservative commentary, repeated with special intensity during the Harriet Miers affair, was: Not another Souter. Not another Kennedy. Not another O’Connor.

When it comes to Supreme Court nominees, conservatives are in agreement: Situation matters. Pundits on the right shouted down Harriet E. Miers over concerns that her evangelical backbone would whither under Washington winds. Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. stepped into her spot seeming of far more stalwart vertebrae, but as his backers have stressed recently, he is a creature of situation as well.

Guided by their professors, students find HLS a training ground for academic careers.

For Dean Robert Clark ’72 it was just another day at the office when students in the Drama Society’s spring parody, License to Bill, called…