Mariana Pargendler, whose scholarship focuses on corporate law, corporate governance, and contract law from economic and comparative perspectives, will join Harvard Law School as a professor of law, effective July 1, 2024.
Pargendler, who served as the Sullivan & Cromwell Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard last fall, is currently a professor of law at FGV Law School in São Paulo, Brazil, where she also directs the Center for Law, Economics, and Governance. Since 2014, she has also taught as a global professor of law at New York University’s Buenos Aires program.
“Mariana Pargendler brings a wonderful comparative law lens to her teaching and to important research that deepens our understanding of corporate law, international development, and the global economy. I am delighted that this terrific scholar and teacher is joining our faculty,” said John F. Manning ’85, the Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
“I am delighted and honored to be joining Harvard Law School’s distinguished faculty and its preeminent corporate law group,” said Pargendler. “I greatly enjoyed engaging with colleagues and students during my visit last fall, and I am thrilled to make Harvard my permanent home.”
Pargendler is the coauthor of “The Anatomy of Corporate Law: A Comparative and Functional Approach,” a leading academic treatise on comparative corporate law.
She has published more than 25 articles in various journals and edited volumes, including the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the American Journal of Comparative Law, among others, and her work has been translated into several languages.
In 2020, her article on the grip of nationalism on corporate law was awarded the Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton Prize by the European Corporate Governance Institute. Her article on the history and political economy of corporate lawmaking in Brazil was recognized with the Hessel Yntema Prize by the American Society of Comparative Law in 2013.
Pargendler holds LL.M. and J.S.D. degrees from Yale Law School, as well as LL.B. and Ph.D. degrees from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil). While at Yale, she was a research fellow at the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at the Yale School of Management, as well as an Olin fellow at the Center for Studies in Law, Economics, and Public Policy at Yale Law School.
Prior to joining academia, she practiced in the areas of corporate governance, and mergers and acquisitions, in the New York office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, from 2006 to 2008.
Pargendler has lectured widely at universities across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, and she has served as a visiting professor of law at Columbia, Penn, Stanford, and Yale.
At Harvard, she is expected to teach Corporations, Comparative Corporate Law, Comparative Law, and Contract Design.
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