Tom
Baker

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
University of Pennsylvania Faculty Fellow

Research Topic

Conversion and Intermarriage in the United States during the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Centuries: Opportunities for Being and Doing Jewish.

Bio

Tom Baker is the William Maul Measey Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. During his fellowship he will be conducting mixed methods research on intermarriage and conversion in late twentieth century and early twenty-first century American society. His prior research examines insurance, risk, and responsibility using methods from a variety of disciplines, including law, sociology, economics, psychology, and history. Among other recognition, he received the 2024 Kalven Prize from the Law & Society Association for outstanding contribution to the empirical study of law. Baker also coordinates the activities funded by the Gruss endowment, which brings scholars of talmudic law to Penn annually to teach, give public lectures, and organize workshops. 

Baker received his J.D. from Harvard University.

Selected publications

  • With Anja Shortland, “The Government behind Insurance Governance: Lessons for Ransomware,” Wiley Online Library (2022).
  • “Uncertainty > Risk: Lessons for Legal Thought from the Insurance Runoff Market,” Intellectual Live @ Penn Carey Law (2021).

Fellowship

2025–2026

Exploring the many ways that Jewishness is expressed and contested across geographies of the contemporary moment.