Barak Richman: Ace of Diamonds

By Jon Goldstein

DURHAM, NC -- Barak Richman, who joins the Duke Law faculty as an assistant professor this fall, began his academic career with an eye toward economics. He earned his master's degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and even now he is finishing his work toward a PhD in business administration from Berkeley. But as he studied both economics and law - he earned his JD from Harvard Law School in 2002 - Richman came to realize that many of the most important and relevant debates affecting economic issues take place in the world of law, including in law schools.

"The issues I found really compelling were those being studied in law schools," said Richman, who recently completed a clerkship with Judge Bruce M. Selya of the First Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Providence, RI. "Among those areas are government and public policy - issues of public concern. There's also a greater focus on our public institutions, especially, but not limited to, the courts, and determining what their limitations are and how policy interventions can lead to improvements."

His study of diamond merchants in New York - and how their business often operates beyond the reach of courts - underscores his fascination with the legal system's limitations and what certain merchant communities have done to overcome those limitations. He has written a working paper on the subject titled, "Community Enforcement of Informal Contracts: Jewish Diamond Merchants in New York."

Richman's academic interests are highly varied. In addition to law and economics, he has written about health care policy and the U.S. Supreme Court's political relationship with Congress. He has a joint appointment at Duke as an assistant professor of political science. Among his other recent working papers are "Incorporating Psychosocial Variables into Health Care Policy: A Behavioral Economic Examination of Medicaid Expansion," "Modeling Supreme Court Decision Making: The Congressional Constraint," "A Transaction Cost Economizing Approach to Regulation: Understanding the NIMBY Problem," and "The History, Economics, and Political Economics of Regulating Automobile Insurance."

His broad interests across a spectrum of subjects are, in part, what make him such a strong addition to the faculty, said Dean Katharine Bartlett. "Barak Richman is a real find," she said. "He joins a cluster of scholars - including Clark Havighurst in the health law area, David Lange, James Boyle and Jerome Reichman in intellectual property, Arti Rai in biotechnology, Stuart Benjamin in telecommunications, and Jonathan Wiener and Chris Schroeder in environmental law - whose research and teaching relate in various ways to science, health and technology. He also further enhances our incredible strength in interdisciplinary studies. Barak was a perfect fit for Duke and will prove soon, I believe, to have been an extremely important junior appointment."

His teaching experience includes a stint in 2001 as a sophomore tutorial instructor in Harvard University's economics department, work in 2000 as a negotiation workshop section leader at Harvard Law's Program of Instruction for Lawyers and a year as a visiting lecturer in economics with the Economics Faculty at Hanoi National University. As an undergraduate at Brown University he taught a class in physics for high school students through a federal program that targets teenagers who would be the first in their families to attend college. Outside of the classroom, he spent three years as a research assistant for the Senate Committee on Finance, then under the direction of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Clark Havighurst, William Neal Reynolds professor emeritus of law, says Richman is extremely well suited for the role he has taken on the Duke Law faculty. "His background in behavioral and institutional economics gives him special insight into why firms and industries, including health care, are organized as they are and how they might be organized differently to solve the complex informational and transactional problems they confront," Havighurst said. "I look forward to learning from Barak as well as to helping him get launched on productive projects."

Richman, whose wife, Laura, will be a visiting assistant professor in Duke's Department of Psychology, described Duke as the ideal institution in which he can both teach and learn. Proximity to Duke's highly rated medical school makes the environment even more attractive, he said, because of his interest in health-related law.

"The faculty at the Law School does some really exciting research, and Duke is a very engaging and supportive community that my wife and I are excited to be a part of," he said. "The emphasis on interdisciplinary work and the open-door culture make the whole university amenable to collaborative dialogue and research. And that's an exceptional opportunity considering the number of top-notch departments and schools that the University has."

New Faculty Forum 2002