Professor Jody Kraus smiling

Jody Kraus

  • Alfred McCormack Professor of Law
Education

J.D., Yale Law School, 1990
Ph.D., University of Arizona, 1987
M.A., University of Arizona, 1984
B.A., Ohio State University, 1982

Areas of Specialty

Contracts
Commercial Law
Law and Economics
Philosophy of Law
Political Philosophy

An expert on contracts and commercial law, Kraus is the co-author of a leading contracts casebook, Contract Law and Theory (sixth edition), and has published extensively in both law reviews and peer-reviewed journals. He is a member of the American Arbitration Association Roster of Arbitrators, has testified as an expert on contracts and the Uniform Commercial Code in both U.S. and foreign disputes, regularly consults on these subjects for attorneys around the world, has served as an expert in both U.S. trials and arbitrations and foreign trials and as co-counsel in U.S. appellate litigation and arbitration, and regularly lectures and consults for American and foreign attorneys. Recently, Kraus served as lead counsel for appellant in Trina Solar US, Inc. v. Jasmin Solar Pty Ltd, 954 F.3d 567 (2nd Cir. 2020) in a successful appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, reversing the District Court’s confirmation of an arbitration award and dismissing the case against appellant. Kraus is a lifetime member of the American Law Institute and a member of the bars of New York, Virginia, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Kraus teaches introductory and advanced contracts, the Uniform Commercial Code, creditors' rights, suretyship, and contract theory. His scholarship focuses on the relationship between moral and economic theories of law in general, with particular emphasis on contract law. Recently, Kraus co-authored, with Robert Scott, The Case Against Equity in American Contract Law (93 Southern California Law Review 1323 (2020)).

Publications

  • “The Case Against Equity in American Contract Law,” Southern California Law Review, 2020
  • “The Correspondence of Contract and Promise,” Columbia Law Review, 2009
  • “Personal Sovereignty and Normative Power Skepticism,” Columbia Law Review Sidebar, 2009
  • “Contract Design and the Structure of Contractual Intent,” (with Robert E. Scott), New York University Law Review, 2009
  • “From Langdell to Law and Economics: Two Conceptions of Stare Decisis in Contract Law and Theory,” Virginia Law Review, 2008
  • Contract Law and Theory, (with Robert E. Scott), LexisNexis, 2007
  • “A Critique of the Efficient Performance Hypothesis,” Yale Law Journal Pocket Part, 2007
  • “Transparency and Determinacy in Common Law Adjudication: A Philosophical Defense of Explanatory Economic Analysis,” Virginia Law Review, 2007
  • “Legal Indeterminacy and Moral Justification,” William and Mary Law Review, 2007
  • The Jurisprudential Foundations of Corporate and Commercial Law, (ed. with Steven D. Walt), Cambridge University Press, 2000
  • The Limits of Hobbesian Contractarianism, Cambridge University Press, 1993