Ning sat next to me at a packed classroom in the University of Chicago Law School. She introduced herself as a Professor from the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing who had never been to the United States before. She sipped tea without taking her eyes off of the chalkboard behind Professor Saul Levmore. She was making small talk that remained polite, but small. This was the first lecture of the two-week Law and Economics Institute’s Summer Course, and she was prepared to concentrate.

“At Chicago,” said Dean Schill at the opening presentation, “We’re never afraid of asking the hard questions.”

The University of Chicago is the birthplace of the Law and Economics Institute. Richard Epstein, Richard Posner, and Nobel laureates Gary Becker, Ronald Coase, and George Stigler worked together for more than fifty years to provide groundbreaking approaches to legal analysis, that drew intersections between these two fields that hadn’t been seen before. Focusing on Property Rights and Private Law, this two-week intensive for students, professors, lawyers and policy-makers from China and Taiwan that Ning and I were sitting in was designed to be a kind of advanced crash course. In a series of lectures, the Economics of Contract Law was taught by Eric Posner, Property and Capital Markets by Douglas Baird, Property and Public Choice by Saul Levmore, and the Economic Analysis of Remedies – Omri Ben-Shahar.

Read more at University of Chicago Undergraduate Law Review