Hao Jiang
I am an assistant professor of comparative private law. I have written on topics in contract theory, American, Chinese and European business and private law. Prior to joining Bocconi, I taught at Tulane Law School, City University of Hong Kong, visited Paris II and Trieste and conducted post-doctoral research at Max Planck Institute. I am a member of the New York State Bar and European Law Institute. I am the author and editor of two books published by Cambridge Press and one by Edward Elgar. My co-authored book, the introduction to the comparative study of private law, is considered a leading work in comparative private law. My edited volume on Chinese Civil Code was the first comprehensive scholarly take on the new Chinese Civil Code in the West in English language. I have authored a dozen journal articles in Tulane Law Review and Michigan State Law Review, NYU Journal of Law and Business, American Journal of Jurisprudence, European Review of Private Law etc. My work has been translated into Chinese and Spanish and cited by Delaware Court of Chancery. I earned a law degree in China along with a J.D., an LL.M. and an S.J.D. from Tulane Law School. I am currently leading a comparative study of contract law with the aim of drafting a restatement of contract law for the three jurisdictions in greater China, namely, mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. I am also developing a moral theory of contract law, contract as voluntary commutative justice, that would explain main contract doctrines across jurisdictions coherently. In spring 2024, I was a visiting fellow at Yale Law School.
My research connects doctrines, cases, legal history and moral philosophy. I often write about the doctrinal inconsistencies in private law in America, China and continental Europe and trace them back to theoretical incoherence.
I also use empirical methods (judge interviews, fact-based questionnaires etc.) to study the inconsistencies between doctrinal rules and their applications in reality.
With James Gordley, I am publishing a forthcoming paper on the doctrine of causa in Tulane Law Review where we argue causa is not a necessarily needed doctrine but the modern use of causa in contemporary law preserves the idea of contract as voluntary commutative justice.
My main research interest is to use the Aristotelian idea of commutative justice to explain private law. I am also interested in studying the doctrinal issues arising out of the codification of Chinese civil law.