Omri Ben-Shahar
Leo and Eileen Herzel Distinguished Service Professor of Law
Omri Ben-Shahar is the Leo and Eileen Herzel Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School and Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics. He earned both a Ph.D. in Economics and an S.J.D. from Harvard. Before joining Chicago, he was the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Michigan. He served as Co-Reporter for the American Law Institute's Restatement of Consumer Contracts and was previously a member of Israel's Antitrust Court.
Teaching Style
Professor Ben-Shahar teaches contracts and consumer law with a strong law-and-economics orientation, using game theory and economic models to illuminate legal doctrines. He is an active Socratic questioner who cold-calls students and pushes them to think about the incentive effects of contract rules. His style is intellectually rigorous but also lively and humorous, and he often uses provocative hypotheticals to challenge conventional wisdom about consumer protection.
Cold Call Tips
- 1Understand basic game theory and economic reasoning — Ben-Shahar frames many contract issues in terms of strategic behavior and incentives
- 2Be ready to critically evaluate consumer protection regulations and ask whether they actually help consumers
- 3Read his work on mandated disclosure to understand his skepticism of traditional regulatory approaches
- 4When called on, be prepared to identify the efficiency implications of different contract default rules
Areas of Expertise
Education
- S.J.D., Harvard Law School
- Ph.D. in Economics, Harvard University
- LL.B., Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Notable Publications
- Personalized Law: Different Rules for Different People (2021, with Ariel Porat)
- More Than You Wanted to Know: The Failure of Mandated Disclosure (2014, with Carl Schneider)
Research Interests
More Professors at University of Chicago Law School
Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, Election Law, Conflict of Laws
Contract Law, International Law, Constitutional Law, Financial Regulation
Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, National Security Law
Administrative Law, Regulatory Policy, Constitutional Law
Antitrust Law, Intellectual Property, Network Industries, Bankruptcy
Property Law, Privacy Law, Intellectual Property, Law and Technology