Daniel Markovits (born August 4, 1969) is the

Guido Calabresi Guido Calabresi (born October 18, 1932) is an Italian-born American jurist who serves as a senior circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He is a former Dean of Yale Law School, where he has been a professor s ...

Professor of Law at the

Yale Law School Yale Law School (YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824. The 2020–21 acceptance rate was 4%, the lowest of any law school in the United ...

and the founding director of the Yale Center for the Study of Private Law. He is the author of ''The Meritocracy Trap'' (2019).

Education

After earning a B.A. in mathematics,

summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

, from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

, Markovits received a British

Marshall Scholarship The Marshall Scholarship is a postgraduate scholarship for "intellectually distinguished young Americans ndtheir country's future leaders" to study at any university in the United Kingdom. It is considered among the most prestigious scholarsh ...

to study in England, where he was awarded an M.Sc. in

econometrics Econometrics is an application of statistical methods to economic data in order to give empirical content to economic relationships. M. Hashem Pesaran (1987). "Econometrics", '' The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics'', v. 2, p. 8 p. 8 ...

and mathematical economics from the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), established in 1895, is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. The school specialises in the social sciences. Founded ...

as well as a

bachelor A bachelor is a man who is not and never has been married.Bachelors are, in Pitt & al.'s phrasing, "men who live independently, outside of their parents' home and other institutional settings, who are neither married nor cohabitating". (). Etymo ...

and

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

in philosophy from the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

. Markovits then returned to

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

to study law and, after clerking for

, joined the faculty.

Career

At Yale, Markovits publishes on a range of disciplines, including on the philosophical foundations of private law, moral and political philosophy, and behavioral economics. He delivered the 2015

commencement speech In the United States, a commencement speech or commencement address is a speech given to graduating students, generally at a university, although the term is also used for secondary education institutions and in similar institutions around the ...

at the Yale Law School, in which he argued that "meritocracy now constitutes a modern-day aristocracy, one might even say, purpose-built for a world in which the greatest source of wealth is not land or factories but

human capital Human capital or human assets is a concept used by economists to designate personal attributes considered useful in the production process. It encompasses employee knowledge, skills, know-how, good health, and education. Human capital has a subs ...

, the free labor of skilled workers". Markovits has also published a number of articles in ''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 185 ...

''.

''The Meritocracy Trap''

In 2019, Markovits published his third book, '' The Meritocracy Trap'', in which he places meritocracy at the center of rising economic inequality and social and political dysfunction. The book takes up the law, economics, and politics of human capital to identify the mechanisms through which meritocracy breeds inequality, and to expose the burdens that meritocratic inequality imposes on all who fall within meritocracy's orbit. The book figured on the Amazon bestseller list and was widely praised. It was not universally well-received, however. Timothy Sandefur, writing for ''The Objective Standard'', a

libertarian Libertarianism (from ; or from ) is a political philosophy that holds freedom, personal sovereignty, and liberty as primary values. Many libertarians believe that the concept of freedom is in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle, according ...

journal, explains that "Markovits's prescription or the problems he addressesis for a society in which government will reward 'uncompetitive mediocrity' instead of individual initiative, and mankind's noblest quality—the love of excellence—is regarded as a menace". Further, Sandefur argues that "Markovits's reliance on...loaded language is a good sign that his argument cannot stand—pardon the pun—on its own merits".

Selected publications

* ''A Modern Legal Ethics: Adversary Advocacy in a Democratic Age'' (2008) * ''Contract Law and Legal Methods'' (

Foundation Press West (also known by its original name, West Publishing) is a business owned by Thomson Reuters that publishes legal, business, and regulatory information in print, and on electronic services such as Westlaw. Since the late 19th century, West has ...

– 2012) * "The Distributional Preferences of an Elite",

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

(2015) * ''The Meritocracy Trap'' (

Penguin Press Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initiall ...

– 2019)

References

Yale Law School faculty 21st-century American lawyers 1969 births Living people Place of birth missing (living people) {{US-legal-academic-bio-stub