Lisa Bernstein

About

Lisa Bernstein is the Wilson-Dickinson Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. She received her BA in economics from the University of Chicago in 1986 and her JD from Harvard Law School in 1990, where she was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics and received the John M. Olin Prize. Bernstein has held academic positions at several prestigious institutions, including Georgetown University Law Center, Boston University School of Law, and visiting appointments at Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, the College of Law and Business in Ramat Gan, the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, University of Paris West Nanterre, and Bar Ilan University. She is also an International Research Fellow at the Center for Corporate Reputation at the Said School of Business, University of Oxford, and a fellow at World Commerce and Contracting. Her research interests focus on contracts and commercial law, with particular emphasis on modern supply chain relationships, social network analysis, and the intersection of strategy and relational contracting. She is also interested in the design of commercial courts in emerging economies, industry-specific dispute resolution, and the relationship between social structures and economic development.

Research topics

• Law
• Business
• Political science
• Law and economics
• Economics

Selected publications

• Trade Usage in the Courts: The Flawed Conceptual and Evidentiary Basis of Article 22s Incorporation Strategy

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2013-01-01 · 92 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Merchant Law in a Modern Economy

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2013-01-01 · 28 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Beyond Relational Contracts: Social Capital and Network Governance in Procurement Contracts

  The Journal of Legal Analysis · 2015-12-01 · 24 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The master agreements that nominally govern the transactions between mid-western OEMs and their suppliers are not, for the most part, designed to create legal obligations. Rather, like the role played by firm boundaries in the Coase-Williamson theory of the firm, they create a space in which private order can flourish. This article explores how sophisticated transactors in this market have combined governance techniques associated with arm’s-length contracting, intra-firm hierarchy, and trust-ba…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Copying and Context: Tying as a Solution to the Lack of Intellectual Property Protection of Contract Terms

  eYLS (Yale Law School) · 2013-01-01 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In his Article Contracts as Technology Kevin Davis makes an analogy between technological innovation and contractual innovation and suggests that contractual innovation, like technological innovation, can both add value to exchange and promote trade. Davis presents a theory of the uses and sources of contractual innovation that has at its core the idea that “[t]he principal determinant of the value of adopting a contract is the value of the changes in behavior it induces.” The Article then draws…

  Publisher

• Merchant Law in a Modern Economy

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2014-12-18 · 10 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Drawing on empirical evidence from the Middle Ages to the present and theoretical arguments developed by neoformalist scholars over the past decade, this chapter explores the uneasy fit between the jurisprudence of the Uniform Commercial Code and its machinery for adjusting to change, and the needs of a modern outsourced economy. It concludes that, given the effects of the Code on multi-agent firms dealing with other multi-agent firms, mere amendments to Article 2 will not suffice to su…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Omri Ben‐Shahar

  University of Chicago

  12 shared

• Francesco Parisi

  7 shared

• Brad Peterson

  Mayer Brown (United States)

  5 shared

• Claire Wright

  4 shared

• Dana Kay Nelkin

  4 shared

• Sandy Rierson

  Chicago Kent College of Law

  4 shared

• Linda M. Keller

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  4 shared

• Thomas Jefferson

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• Senior Faculty, Institutional and Organizational Economics A…
• Fellow, International Association for Contract & Commercial…
• International Research Fellow, Center for Corporate Reputati…
• Fellow, World Commerce and Contracting
• Otto Monsted Visiting Guest Professor (Summer, 2024)

Similar researchers at University of Chicago

• Douglas G. Bairdh-48
• Emily Bussh-40