Ron Harris

Biography

Ron Harris is a Professor of Legal History and former Dean, Faculty of Law Tel-Aviv University. He earned an LL.B. and B.A. and M.A. in history from TAU and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. He was a visiting professor at UC Berkeley, USC and Cornell University, a short term visiting professor at ENS Paris and HEC Paris and spent extended research periods in Oxford and London. Harris is a co-founder of the Israeli Legal History Association. Harris works on the intersection of legal history and economic history. His main research fields are the history of the corporation and of other forms of business organization, the history of bankruptcy and consumer credit, and Israeli legal history. Harris is the author of Industrializing English Law: Entrepreneurship and Business Organization, 1720 – 1844 and of Israeli Law: The Formative Years 1948-1977 and the editor of two other books, and the author or co-author of numerous articles in economics, business, history and law journals. He is currently working on a book (under contract with Princeton University Press) on the legal-economic organization of early modern Eurasian trade; on a book project on the comparative history of private companies in France, Germany, Britain, and the US (with Naomi Lamoreaux, Timothy Guinnane and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal); and on the transplantation of company law in the British Empire with particular focus on British ruled Palestine (with Michael Crystal).

Research Interest

Anglo-American Legal and Economic History, History of Business Organizations, Israeli Legal History, Consumer Bankruptcy, Comparative Law