Jon Hanson is the Alan A. Stone Professor of Law and the Director of the Systemic Justice Project at Harvard Law School, where he has taught since 1992.
Hanson graduated from Rice University, summa cum laude with majors in Economics and Policy Studies. As a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, he researched the provision of neonatal intensive care services in the U.K. before attending attending Yale Law School. After law school, Hanson clerked for Judge José A. Cabranes, and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Yale Law School.
Work
Hanson’s teaching and scholarship melds history, the mind sciences, economics, and law. He is a four-time recipient of Harvard Law School’s prestigious Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence, an honor bestowed each spring by the Harvard Law School graduating class (1999, 2011, 2015, and 2022). He is also the recipient of other teaching awards, including several Shatter the Ceiling Awards (2015, 2016, and 2017) for excellence in mentorship and for integrating social justice into the curriculum. Hanson has been the faculty leader for 1L Section Six since 2004.
Hanson has founded or co-founded several other organizations, including The Project on Law and Mind Sciences, and the Justice Initiative and serves on the Board of Directors for the Public Health Advocacy Institute.
Some of his recent public remarks available on video include conversations with Noam Chomsky and Briahna Joy Gray, his 2022 HLS “Class Day” speech, and his 2022 HLS “Last Lecture.”
Scholarship
An illustrative sample of Hanson’s scholarship includes the book, Ideology, Psychology, and Law, and numerous law review articles, including:
- “The Blame Frame: Justifying (Racial) Injustice in America” (with Kathleen Hanson);
- “The Illusion of Law: The Legitimating Schemas of Modern Policy and Corporate Law” (with Ronald Chen);
- “Occupy Justice: Introducing the Injustice Framework” (with Jacob Lipton);
- “The Situation: An Introduction to the Situational Character, Critical Realism, Power Economics, and Deep Capture” (with David Yosifon);
- “Taking Behavioralism Seriously: The Problem of Market Manipulation” (with Doug Kysar); and
- “The Great Attributional Divide: How Divergent Views of Human Behavior are Shaping Legal Policy” (with Adam Benforado).
You can find a more complete list of his publications on SSRN.
Personal
Hanson lives in Harvard, MA with his wife, Kathleen and their dog. They enjoy long hikes and visits from their three grown children. You can read more about Hanson’s background and path to Harvard Law School in this Harvard Magazine Portrait.