Wednesday, April 08, 2020
Yale Law '90: Prof. Jon Hansen
I've been profiling my classmates in the Yale Law Class of 1990 on Wednesdays lately; it's a pretty intimidating group.
Perhaps my favorite thing I have stumbled upon while researching my classmates is this gem from the New York Times. Jon Hanson is a torts professor at Harvard Law School (which, I hear, is ok), and leads one of the 80 person first-year sections there. In the article, he describes a few theories about the high number of marriages in his section: “We spend a lot of time scratching below the surface of doctrines, professional norms, and we spend time in a more personal place,” he said. “I try to bring in a human component into section. I welcome partners and spouses. I ask students to share baby pictures, and ask students to guess who they are. We see something about backgrounds, commonality. I try to build in opportunities to display their other sides.”
That's a pretty great take for a professor. His students are lucky.
Jon came to Yale Law from Rice, a secret garden in the Museum District of Houston. After school, he got a plum clerkship with Second Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes, who was a mentor to many of the people I admired in school. After that, he did a Post-Doc back at Yale and then commenced his 28 years on the Harvard faculty.
Though he teaches torts, much of his interest lies at the intersection of social cognition, history, economics, and law, and he runs the Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard.
By all accounts, he is a great teacher. There are few things I admire more.
Here he is talking about that fascinating work:
