James Russell Gordley
W.R. Irby Chair in Law
Education & Affiliations
Biography
James Gordley specializes in comparative law, contract law and legal history. He came to Tulane Law School in 2007 from the Berkeley Law School where he had been a faculty member since 1978. In 2024-25 held a joint appointment as Distinguished Professor of Legal History at the Università Bocconi, Milan, Italy. Gordley is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the European Law Institute, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, and a titulary member of the International Academy of Comparative Law. He has received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society of Comparative Law, and the Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Distinguished Teaching Award from the Berkeley Law School. Tulane Law School’s graduating class of 2010 selected him for the Felix Frankfurter Distinguished Teaching Award. He is the author of several books, including The Foundations of American Contract Law, The Eclipse of Classical Thought in China and the West; An Introduction to the Comparative Study of Private Law (with Hao Jiang and Arthur von Mehren); The Jurists: A Critical History; Foundations of Private Law, and The Philosophical Origins of Modern Contract Doctrine. |
