Henry B. Hansmann (1945-) graduated from the Law School in 1974 and earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1978. He joined the Law School faculty in 1983 and was the first joint J.D.-Ph.D. in Economics on the faculty.

Hansmann’s scholarship focuses on the law and economics of organizational ownership and design. Through this analytical lens, he has examined legal entities of every kind, from proprietary to nonprofit, private to public, domestic to foreign, and ancient to modern. His article, The Role of Nonprofit Enterprise, 89 Yale L.J. 835 (1980), was the first to characterize non-profit organizations as rational economic responses to specific market contexts, mitigating information asymmetries between donors and those they seek to benefit, rather than creatures of history or embodiments of ethical consideration. In addition to his seminal work on nonprofits, his magisterial book, The Ownership of Enterprise, continues to provide powerful insight, as evidenced by a conference at Columbia Law School honoring Hansmann and the book’s 25th anniversary in 2021.