About Dhammika
Dhammika Dharmapala is the Paul H. and Theo Leffmann Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He blends an economist’s training with a law school appointment. The result is work that often examines legal questions through quantitative and economic lenses. He teaches, writes and advises students in a setting that prizes empirical analysis.
His academic training began in Australia, where he earned a Master of Economics and a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Western Australia. He went on to complete a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Those degrees form the backbone of his approach to scholarship and teaching.
Dharmapala joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty in 2009. He spent years there building courses and scholarship grounded in economic methods. In 2021 he was named the Paul H. and Theo Leffmann Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. That named professorship reflects the role he now fills at a major law faculty.
Colleagues and students encounter a scholar who emphasizes data, models and institutional detail. His work tends to bring empirical tools to bear on questions that cross law and economics. Classroom sessions combine formal economic reasoning with case studies and policy debates. He has supervised graduate and law students who pursue empirical projects, and he participates in faculty workshops that test theoretical claims against evidence.
On campus he holds an office at the University of Chicago Law School and maintains an active teaching and research agenda. He teaches courses that draw on economics while engaging legal doctrine. His research continues to explore how economic analysis can inform law and public policy. He currently teaches and researches at the University of Chicago Law School, focusing on the economic dimensions of legal rules and institutions.
