Professor Anthony Ogus CBE FBA (1945-2026)
Nuno Garoupa
It is with profound sadness that the European law and economics community has learned of the passing of Anthony Ogus, an eminent scholar, a pioneering intellectual force in European law and economics, and one of the formative figures in the development of the European Association of Law and Economics (EALE) from its earliest years in the 1980s until his retirement. His death marks the loss of a scholar whose influence extended across generations of academics and whose work helped establish the foundations of the field in Europe.
Educated at St Dunstan’s College, London, and at Magdalen College, Oxford, Anthony Ogus held academic appointments at the Universities of Leicester, Oxford, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Manchester, where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Law from 1990 to 1992. He also held visiting positions at distinguished institutions including Antwerp, Berkeley, Hamburg, Maastricht, Paris, Rotterdam, and Toronto. In later years, he was Emeritus Professor at the Universities of Manchester and Rotterdam, maintaining an active intellectual presence well beyond formal retirement.
Anthony Ogus was one of the earliest and most influential scholars to apply economic reasoning systematically to legal institutions and public policy. His scholarship, spanning the economics of regulation, consumer protection, nuisance law, social security law, and self-regulation, left a lasting mark on both legal scholarship and public policy analysis. His writings remain foundational for scholars working at the intersection of law, regulation, and institutional design. As a founding co-editor of International Review of Law and Economics, he played a decisive role in creating an enduring intellectual platform for the discipline.
His public service was equally distinguished. He served as a Member, and later Vice-Chairman, of the Social Security Advisory Committee, for which he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2002. In 2007, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, in recognition of his exceptional scholarly contributions.
Beyond legal scholarship, Anthony maintained throughout his life a deep passion for the arts, particularly music and opera. He published concert and opera reviews and wrote with characteristic sensitivity about his experiences as an opera-goer, reflecting an intellectual curiosity that always extended beyond disciplinary boundaries.
For many within EALE, Anthony Ogus was not only a distinguished academic but also a mentor, collaborator, and source of personal encouragement. In my own case, I had the privilege of knowing him as an exceptional co-author. His generosity toward younger scholars, intellectual rigor, and quiet institutional leadership helped shape both careers and the broader European scholarly community. On behalf of EALE, we express our deepest condolences to his family, friends, former colleagues, and students. He will be greatly missed, and his legacy will continue through the many scholars and institutions he helped inspire over several decades.