Daniel Markovits (born August 4, 1969) is the

Guido Calabresi Guido Calabresi (born October 18, 1932) is an Italian-born American legal scholar and Senior United States 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 pr ...

Professor of Law at the

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & Worl ...

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, from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

, 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 widely considered one of the most prestigious sc ...

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

econometrics Econometrics is the 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) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...

and a B.Phil. and

D.Phil. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in philosophy from the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. Markovits then returned to

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

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 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 world. The commencement ...

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, 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. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

''.

''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 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 ha ...

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

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

(2015) * ''The Meritocracy Trap'' ( Penguin Press – 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