Taisu Zhang is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School and works on comparative legal and economic history, private law theory, and contemporary Chinese law and politics. His first book, The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property in Pre-Industrial China and England, was published by Cambridge University Press, and received the 2018 Presidents Award from the Social Science History Association and the 2018 Gaddis Smith Book Prize from the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. This is the first entry in a planned trilogy of books on the institutional and cultural origins of early modern economic divergence. The second entry, The Ideological Foundations of the Qing Fiscal State, is under contract with Cambridge University Press. In addition, Zhang has published articles, essays, and book chapters on a wide array of topics, winning awards from several academic organizations, and is a regular commentator on Chinese law, society, and politics in media outlets.

Professor Zhang holds three degrees from Yale: a B.A. in History and Mathematics, a J.D., and a Ph.D. in History. He has also taught at the Duke University School of Law, the University of Hong Kong, Brown University, and the Tsinghua University School of Law. He holds a secondary appointment at Yale as Professor of History.