Dr. Matthew Adler

Biography

Matthew Adler is the Richard Horvitz Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke University, where he also serves as the founding director of the Duke Center for Law, Economics, and Public Policy. His scholarship is interdisciplinary, integrating welfare economics, normative ethics, and legal theory. Adler’s current research agenda is centered on 'prioritarianism,' a refinement of utilitarianism that gives extra weight to the needs of the disadvantaged. He works on the theoretical foundations of prioritarianism, its implementation in policy analysis, and methodological approaches such as cost-benefit analysis that incorporate distributional weights. His publications include significant works such as 'New Foundations of Cost-Benefit Analysis' (Harvard, 2006, co-authored with Eric Posner), which discusses the integration of fair distribution considerations into policy analysis, and 'Measuring Social Welfare: Introduction' (Oxford, 2019), which provides an overview of social-welfare function approaches. In addition to his current role at Duke, Adler has served as editor for the journal 'Legal Theory' and 'Economics and Philosophy,' and previously held the Leon Meltzer Professorship at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also been a visiting professor at several prominent institutions, including Bar-Ilan University, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago. His academic credentials include a B.A. and J.D. from Yale University, where he was a member of the Yale Law Journal, and an M. Litt. in modern history from St. Antony's College, Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar.

Research Interests

Experience