John Mark Ramseyer

John Mark Ramseyer (born c. 1954) is Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies at Harvard Law School and a leading scholar of Japanese Law and Law and Economics, the author of over 10 books and 50 articles in scholarly journals.[1] He is known as co-author of one of the leading Corporations casebooks, Klein, Ramseyer & Bainbridge, Business Associations, Cases and Materials on Agency, Partnerships, Llcs, and Corporations, now in its 10th edition.[2] In 2018 he was awarded Japan's Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon in recognition of "his extensive contributions to the development of Japanese studies in the U.S. and the promotion of understanding toward Japanese society and culture."[3][4]

Education and Career

The child of Mennonite missionary parents, Ramseyer lived in Kyushu's Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan through the age of 18 and is fluent in Japanese. After clerking for Judge Stephen Breyer (then of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, later on the Supreme Court), he practiced law at Chicago's Sidley & Austin. After teaching law at UCLA from 1986 to 1992, he moved first to the University Chicago School of Law and then, in 1998 to Harvard.[5] He has taught at several Japanese universities including the University of Tokyo, Hitotsubashi University, and Tohoku University.[6]

Controversy

In 2021, controversy followed the anticipation of an article in the International Review of Law and Economics in which Ramseyer contradicted the testimony of comfort women forced into sexual slavery in the Japanese Empire. Ramseyer asserted that "they chose prostitution over those alternative opportunities because they believed prostitution offered them a better outcome." [7]

Carter J. Eckert, Yoon Se Young Professor of Korean History at Harvard University, criticized Ramseyer's article as “woefully deficient, empirically, historically, and morally.”[8]

Selected publications
  • Ramseyer, J. Mark (March 2021). "Contracting for sex in the Pacific War". International Review of Law and Economics. 65. doi:10.1016/j.irle.2020.105971.
  • J. Mark Ramseyer, Second-Best Justice: The Virtues of Japanese Private Law (2015)
  • Yoshiro Miwa & J. Mark Ramseyer, The Fable of the Keiretsu: Urban Legends of the Japanese Economy (Univ. of Chi. Press 2006)
  • J. Mark Ramseyer & Eric B. Rasmusen, Measuring Judicial Independence: The Political Economy of Judging in Japan (Univ. of Chi. Press 2003)
  • Japanese Law: Readings in the Political Economy of Japanese Law (J. Mark Ramseyer ed., forthcoming, Routledge Revivals 2021)
  • J. Mark Ramseyer, Book Review, Japanese Stud. (Oct. 23, 2020) (reviewing R.W. Kostal, Laying Down the Law: The American Legal Revolutions in Occupied Germany and Japan (2019))
  • J. Mark Ramseyer, Social Capital and the Problem of Opportunistic Leadership: The Example of Koreans in Japan (John M. Olin Ctr. for L. Econ. & Bus. Discussion Paper No. 1043, Oct. 2, 2020)
  • J. Mark Ramseyer, Contracting for Compassion in Japanese Buddhism (Harv. John M. Olin Ctr. Discussion Paper No. 1039, Sept. 10, 2020)
  • J. Mark Ramseyer & Eric B. Rasmusen, Suing over Ostracism in Japan: The Informational Logic (Aug. 29, 2020)

References
  1. "J. Mark Ramseyer," curriculum vitae, Harvard Law School, http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/ramseyer/ramseyer2010cv.pdf, September 2010, viewed January 8, 2021.
  2. Business Associations, Cases and Materials on Agency, Partnerships, LLCs, and Corporations, William Klein, J. Ramseyer, Stephen Bainbridge, West Academic Publishing (2018) ISBN 13: 9781683285229.
  3. Professor Mark Ramseyer to receive Order of the Rising Sun decoration
  4. Order of the Rising Sun awarded to Professor Mark Ramseyer
  5. "J. Mark Ramseyer," curriculum vitae, Harvard Law School, http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/ramseyer/ramseyer2010cv.pdf, September 2010, viewed January 8, 2021.
  6. The Harvard Crimson February 5, 1998 Archived December 31, 2010, at WebCite
  7. "Harvard professor invites fury by calling 'comfort women' prostitutes". The Straits Times. 2021-02-03. Retrieved 2021-02-03.
  8. "Harvard Professor's Paper Claiming 'Comfort Women' in Imperial Japan Were Voluntarily Employed Stokes International Controversy". The Harvard Crimson. 2021-02-07. Retrieved 2021-02-08.



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