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

• B.A., Goshen College 1976, History
• A.M., University of Michigan 1978, Japanese Studies
• J.D., Harvard Law School 1982

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 online publication of an article in the International Review of Law and Economics about the comfort women coerced into sexual servitude in Japanese military brothels in the 1930's and 40's. Ramseyer's article attracted controversy because of its contradiction of the testimony of those comfort women who survived. Ramseyer described the comfort women as prostitutes, arguing 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

• 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)

Comfort women

• 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.
• Ramseyer, J. Mark (March 2019). "Comfort women and the Professors - Discussion Paper No. 995" (PDF). John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business, Harvard Law School.
• Ramseyer, J. Mark (1991). "Indentured prostitution in imperial Japan: credible commitments in the commercial sex industry". The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization. Oxford University Press. 7 (1): 89–116. ISSN 8756-6222.

See also

• Park Yu-ha
• Chunghee Sarah Soh
• Japan–South Korea Comfort women Agreement

References

External links

• Harvard Law School: J. Mark Ramseyer