J.D., Yale Law School, 1975
Ph.D. (Philosophy), Yale University, 1972
B.A., Williams College, 1968
Anthony T. Kronman is Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He was appointed to this position in 2004. Professor Kronman served as dean of the Yale Law School from 1994 to 2004. He joined the Yale faculty in 1978 after teaching for two years at the University of Chicago School of Law and for one year at the University of Minnesota Law School. His teaching areas include constitutional law, contracts, legal philosophy and law and religion. He also teaches philosophy, literature and history and politics in the Directed Studies Program in Yale College.
Professor Kronman is the author or co-author of many books and articles on various scholarly and other subjects. His most recent book, “After Disbelief” (2022) explores the meaning of God in an age of disenchantment. “The Assault on American Excellence” (2019) decries the ways in which the consuming passion for diversity and the erosion of free speech undermine educational values and threatens the standing of our colleges and universities in the country at large. His 2016 book, “Confessions of a Born Again Pagan,” offers a sweeping account of the history of Western thought and an original diagnosis of our current spiritual predicament. In 2007, Professor Kronman published “Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life,” and in 1993, “The Lost Lawyer,” which deals with the contemporary state of the American legal profession and the movement away from what he calls the lawyer-statesman ideal of responsible law practice.
Professor Kronman was born in Los Angeles on May 12, 1945 and attended public schools there before going to Williams College in 1963. He graduated from Williams in 1968 with highest honors in political science. Following college, he studied philosophy at Yale and received his Ph.D. in that field in 1972. During his four years as a graduate student, Professor Kronman was a Danforth Fellow. In 1972, he began the study of law at the Yale Law School and received his J.D. in 1975. While at the Law School, he served as a senior editor on the Yale Law Journal.
Professor Kronman is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations. In June 2004, he was named Commander of the French National Order of Merit. In 2018, he received the Kellogg Award from his alma mater Williams College for extraordinary career achievement.
Professor Kronman has served on the board of various non-profit organizations including the Foote School in New Haven, Yale University Press, and the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale. From 2002 to 2006, Professor Kronman served as a Director of Adelphia Communications Corporation. He was the Lead Director of the company for three of these years. Professor Kronman was Of Counsel to the law firm of Boies Schiller Flexner from 2008 to 2019.
Professor Kronman’s father, Harry Kronman, was a television screenwriter and his mother, Rosella, was a film actress and homemaker. He is married to Nancy Greenberg and has four children, Matthew, Emma, Hope, and Alexander.
Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan (Yale, 2016)
 | Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life (Yale University Press, 2007) |
The Lost Lawyer (Harvard, Belknap Press, 1993)
Cases and Materials on Contract Law (with Friedrich Kessler and Grant Gilmore (Little, Brown & Co., 1986)
Max Weber (Stanford, 1983)
The Economics of Contract Law (with Richard Posner) (Little, Brown, & Co., 1978)
The Mystery of the "But" 110 Yale Law Journal 893 (2001)
Tribute to Joseph Goldstein 19 Yale Law & Policy Review 33 (2000)
Is Diversity a Value in American Higher Education? 52 Florida Law Review 861 (2000)
The Law as a Profession, in Ethics in Practice: Lawyers' Roles, Responsibilities, and Regulation (Deborah L. Rhode ed., 2000)
Is Poetry Undemocractic? 16 Georgia State University Law Review 311 (1999)
Professionalism 2 Journal of the Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics 89 (1999)
Rhetoric (Robert S. Marx Lecture) 67 U. of Cincinnati Law Review 677 (1999)
The Law as a Profession 49 Journal of Legal Education 50 (1999)
The Erotic Politician, 10 Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 363 (1998)
The Value of Moral Philosophy, 111 Harvard Law Review 1751 (1998)
Chapman University School of Law Groundbreaking Ceremony,1 Chapman Law Review 1 (1998)
On Making Lawyers Truly Officers of the Court 6 The Responsive Community, 40 (1996)
Leontius' Tale, in Law Stories 54 (Peter Brooks and Paul Gewirtz eds., 1996)
The Fault in Legal Ethics, 100 Dickinson L. Rev. 489 (1996)
Civility (Ray Rushton Distinguished Lecturer Series), 26 Cumberland L. Rev., 727 (1995-96)
The Second Driker Forum for Excellence in the Law, 42 Wayne L. Rev. , 115 (1995)
Amor Fati (The Love of Fate), 45 U. of Toronto L.J. (1995)
My Senior Partner, 104 Yale L.J., 2129 (1995)
Response to Natalie Davis, 5 Yale J. of Criticism, 179 (1991).
Precedent and Tradition, 99 Yale L.J. 1029 (1990)
A Comment on Dean Clark, 89 Colum. L. Rev. 1748 (1989)
Jurisprudential Responses to Legal Realism, 73 Cornell L. Rev. 335 (1988)
Living in the Law, 34 U. Chi. L. Rev. 835 (1987)
Practical Wisdom & Professional Character, 4 Soc. Phil. & Pol. 203 (1986)
The Problem of Judicial Discretion, 36 J. of Leg. Educ. 481 (1986)
Alexander Bickel's Philosophy of Prudence, 94 Yale L.J. 1567 (1985)
Paternalism and the Law of Contracts, 92 Yale L.J. 763 (1983)
What Grant Gilmore Taught, 92 Yale L.J. 6 (1982)
Contract as Promise (Book Review), 91 Yale L.J. 404 (1981)
Foreword: Legal Scholarship and Moral Education, 90 Yale L.J. 955 (1981)
Talent Pooling, XXIII NOMOS 58 (1981)
The Concept of an Author and the Unity of the Commonwealth in Hobbes' Leviathan, XVIII J. of the Hist. of Phil. 159 (1980)
The Privacy Exemption to the Freedom of Information Act, 9 J. Leg. Stud. 727 (1980)
Wealth Maximization as a Normative Principle, 9 J. Leg. Stud. 227 (1980)
Contract Law and Distributive Justice, 89 Yale L.J. 472 (1980)
Secured Financing and Priorities Among Creditors, 88 Yale L.J. 1143 (1979) (with Thomas Jackson)
Aristotle's Idea of Political Fraternity, Amer. J. of Juris. 114 (1979)
Specific Performance, 45 U. Chi. L. Rev. 351 (1978)
Mistake, Information, Disclosure and the Law of Contracts, 7 J. Leg. Stud. 1 (1978)
The Teaching of Jurisprudence in American Law Schools, U. Chi. Law School Record (1977)
Knowledge and Politics (Book Review), 61 Minn. L. Rev. 167 (1976)
Voidable Preferences and Protection of the Expectation Interest, 60 Minn. L. Rev. 971 (1976) (with Thomas Jackson)
The Treatment of Security Interests in After-Acquired Property under the Proposed Bankruptcy Act, 124 U. Pa. L. Rev. 110 (1975)
A Plea for the Financing Buyer, 85 Yale L.J. 1 (1975) (with Thomas Jackson)
Hart, Austin, and the Concept of Legal Sanctions, 84 Yale L.J.584 (1975)
