Elizabeth Scott received a B.A. from the College of William and Mary in 1967 and J.D. from the University of Virginia in1977. She practiced law briefly after graduating from law school and then served as legal director of the Forensic Psychiatry Clinic, Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia from 1979-87. Scott served as Associate Professor at Virginia from 1988-91, University Professor from 1992-2006 and Class of 1962 Professor of Law from 2001-06. She visited at Columbia law school in 1987-88, 2001-02, 2003, and 2005, and joined the Columbia faculty as the Harold R. Medina Professor of Law in 2006. Scott teaches family law, property, criminal law, and children and the law. She has written extensively on marriage, divorce, cohabitation, child custody, adolescent decision-making, and juvenile delinquency. Her research is interdisciplinary, applying behavioral economics, social science research, and developmental theory to family/juvenile law and policy issues. She was the founder and co-director of the University of Virginia's interdisciplinary Center for Children, Families and the Law. Currently, Scott is involved in empirical research on adolescents in the justice system as a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. She is the co-author, with Ira Ellman, Paul Kurtz, Lois Weithorn and Brian Bix of Family Law: Cases, Text, Problems (4th ed., 2004). She is also co-author, with Samuel Davis, Walter Wadlington, and Charles Whitebread of Children in the Legal System (3rd ed. 2004).
Joined Columbia faculty in 2000. Assistant professor of economics, 1986-93; assistant professor of law, 1987-93; and professor of law, 1993-94, at the University of Michigan. Professor of law, 1995-99, and director, John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics, 1998-99, at Georgetown University Law Center. Olin Faculty Research fellow, Yale, 1990; visiting professor of law at Georgetown in 1992 and 1994; visiting professor of law at Columbia in 1998; scholar in residence, New York University School of Law, 2004. Editor, International Review of Law and Economics; Member, Board of Directors, American Law and Economics Association; Chair, Section on Law and Economics, American Association of Law Schools, 2001. Editorial referee for various legal and economic journals and scholarly presses; member of advisory board, Contracts and Commercial Law Abstracts.
Publications
Publications include "The Economics of Promissory Estoppel in Preliminary Negotiations," Yale Law Journal (1996); "Taking Private Ordering Seriously," University of Pennsylvania Law Review (1996); "Positivism and the Separation of Law and Economics," Michigan Law Review (1996); Foundations of the Economic Approach to Law (Foundation Press, 1998); "Standard Form Contracts" and "Contract Formation and Interpretation," in the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law (ed. P. Newman, 1998); "An Economic Analysis of the Guaranty Contract," University of Chicago Law Review (1999); "Indemnity of Legal Fees," in The International Encyclopedia of Law and Economics (ed. B. Bouckaert and G. DeGeest, 2000); "Informality as a Bilateral Assurance Mechanism", Michigan Law Review (2000); "The Economics of Form and Substance in Contract Interpretation," Columbia Law Review (2004); "The Option Element in Contracting," Virginia Law Review (2004). Current research focuses on contracts and commercial law; current teaching includes contracts, commercial law, sales, secured transactions, payment systems, and regulation and public policy.
Avery W. Katz