Riaz Tejani

Riaz Tejani studies the social and cultural impacts of Law & Economics in legal theory, legal education, and professional ethics. He is currently engaged in three book projects: A qualitative empirical study, Economized, examines ethics and culture in the Law & Economics movement with interests in its treatments of distributive justice, social inequality, and organizational ethics; an intellectual history project, Saint-Simon’s Ghost, examines egalitarian strands of Law & Economics theory, scholarship, and policy; and a third manuscript, Legal Realism: a Critical Introduction, offers a survey of Classic and “New” Legal Realism in Europe and North America.

Tejani’s first book, Law Mart: Justice, Access, and For-Profit Law Schools (Stanford, 2017), was an ethnographic account of for-profit legal education during and after the global financial crisis. His second, Law and Society Today (University of California, 2019), critically surveyed contemporary themes in socio-legal studies. His third book, Law and Economics: New Trajectories in Law (Routledge 2023), was a critical introduction to Law & Economics for sociolegal and humanities scholars.

He has served on corporate and non-profit boards and been a public arbitrator for the Financial Industries Regulatory Authority (FINRA). He is co-director of the Law and Society Association’s CRN 28 on New Legal Realism, an associate editor for Political and Legal Anthropology Review, and board member and program chair for the Law and Humanities Interdisciplinary Workshop—a consortium of faculty from Penn, Stanford, Georgetown, UCLA and USC. Tejani’s work has been cited or reviewed in publications including the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal Forum, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, The Nation, and NPR, with select writings reprinted or translated in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and China. Since starting his teaching career in 2011,he has earned student, collegiate, and University awards for teaching (2017) and research (2013, 2014, 2020, 2023).

List of Publications

Books

Economized: The Ethnography of Law & Economics, (in progress).

Saint-Simon’s Ghost: The Egalitarian Roots of American Law & Economics, (under contract, American Philosophical Society Press).

Legal Realism: A Critical Introduction (under contract, Edward Elgar, UK).

Law and Economics: New Trajectories in Law, London and New York: Routledge, 2023.

Law and Society Today, Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019.

South Asia Edition (India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan): Law and Society Today, Jaipur, India: Rawat Publishers, 2023.

Law Mart: Justice, Access, and For-Profit Law Schools, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017. [Anthropology of Policy Series]

 

Articles & Working Papers

“Economic Duress vs. Efficient Breach in Law & Inequality” (in progress).

“Calabresi’s Invite: Bridging Law & Society and Law & Economics Through ‘Situated Valuation,” Law and Society Review 58(4), 635-662, 2024.

“Moral Convergence: The Rules of Professional Responsibility Should Apply to Lawyers in Business Ethics”, 35 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 33, 2022.

Chinese Translation: Ethics and Norms of the Legal Profession, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2024.

“The Life of Transplants: Why Law-And-Economics Has ‘Succeeded’ Where Legal Anthropology Has Not,” 73 Alabama Law Review 734,

“A Working-Class Profession: Opportunism and Diversity in U.S. Law,” Dialectical Anthropology 42:2, 131-148, 2018.

“Professional Apartheid: the Racialization of US Law Schools After Global Economic Crisis,” American Ethnologist 44(3), 2017.

“Efficiency Unbound: Processual Deterrence in the New Legal Realism,” 6 UC Irvine Law Review 207, 2016.

“Proprietary Law Schools and the Marketization of Access to Justice”, Working Paper No. 228, National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, Columbia University.

“National Geographics: Toward a Federalism Function of American Tort Law,” 51 San Diego Law Review 81, 2014.

“Little Black Boxes: Legal Anthropology and the Politics of Autonomy in Tort Law,” 11 University of New Hampshire Law Review 129, 2013.

 

Chapters

“The Infilaw System,” Defunct Law Schools, ed. Robert Jarvis, (forthcoming).

“Legal Education,” Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Anthropology, eds. Maria Sapignoli, Katrin Seidel, and Eugenia Relaño, (forthcoming).

“Legal Realism and New Legal Realism,” Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Anthropology, eds. Maria Sapignoli, Katrin Seidel, and Eugenia Relaño, (forthcoming).

“A Shout in the Cathedral: Elizabeth Mertz’ Groundbreaking Language of Law School,” Leading Works in Legal Anthropology, London and New York: Routledge, 2024.

“Anthropology,” Research Handbook of New Legal Realism, eds. Shauhin Talesh, Elizabeth Mertz, Heinz Klug, Edward Elgar Publishers (UK), 2021.

“Legal Education For Profit and the United Nations Call for “Strong Institutions” in the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda,” Crime Prevention and Justice in 2030 The UN and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, eds. Slawomir Redo and Helmut Kury, New York, NY: Springer Publishing, 2020.

“Market Creep: “Product” Talk in Legal Education,” Power, Legal Education, and Law School Cultures, eds. Meera Deo, Mindie Lazarus-Black & Elizabeth Mertz, New York, NY: Routledge, 2020.

“Distance in Law and Globalization: Armchair Anthropology Revisited,” Comparative Law and Anthropology, ed. James Nafziger, Edward Elgar Publishers (UK), 2017.

“‘Fielding’ Legal Realism: the Law Student as Participant Observer,” The New Legal Realism: Translating Law-And-Society For Today’s Legal Practice, eds. Stewart Macaulay, Elizabeth Mertz & Thomas Mitchell, Cambridge University Press, 2016.