Biography:
James Gordley came to Tulane Law School in 2007 from Boalt Hall, University of California, Berkeley, where he served on the faculty beginning in 1978.  He was a fellow at the Institute of Comparative Law at the University of Florence, an associate with the Boston firm of Foley Hoag & Eliot, and an Ezra Ripley Thayer Fellow at Harvard before beginning his teaching career.

Professor Gordley has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fulbright Fellow, a Senior NATO Fellow and a fellow of the Deutscheforschungsgemeinshaft.  He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Fribourg, Regensburg, Munich, Milan, and Universita Commerciale Luigi Bocconi; a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Law in Hamburg, the European University Institute in Fiesole, and the University of Cologne; and the Jean Monnet Distinguished Professor in Comparative Law at the University of Trent.  He was awarded the UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award in 1984 and the Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction in 2001.  He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a titulary member of the International Academy of Comparative Law.

He is the author of several books, including Foundations of Private Law, An Introduction to the Comparative Study of Private Law (with Arthur von Mehren); The Enforceability of Promises in European Contract Law; Gratian, The Treatise on Laws with the Ordinary Gloss (with Augustine Thompson); and The Philosophical Origins of Modern Contract Doctrine. 

Recent publications include "When is the Use of Foreign Law Possible?  A Hard Case: The Protection of Privacy in Europe and the United States," published with the proceedings of the Louisiana State University Symposium on "Law Making in a Global World," 67 Louisiana Law Review 1073 (2007); "Morality and Contract: The Question of Paternalism," published with the proceedings of the conference "Law and Morality," held at the William and Mary School of Law, March, 2006, 48 William and Mary Law Review 1733 (2007); and "Comparative Law and Legal History," The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law 753 (Oxford University Press, 2006).