Calabresi is considered, along with Ronald Coase and Richard Posner, a founder of the field of law and economics.
Calabresi's parents were active in the resistance against Italian fascism and eventually fled Italy, immigrating to the United States in 1939.
Guido's older brother Paul Calabresi (1930–2003) was a prominent medical and pharmacological researcher of cancer and oncology.
[2] Calabresi graduated from Yale College in 1953 with a Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude, in economics.
His pioneering contributions to the field include the application of economic reasoning to tort law, and a legal interpretation of the Coase theorem.
Under Calabresi's intellectual and administrative leadership, Yale Law School became a leading center for legal scholarship imbued with economics and other social sciences.
[7] Calabresi, alone among Yale Law School faculty members, supported Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court.
[10] In 2006, Yale created the Guido Calabresi Professorship of Law, with Kenji Yoshino serving as the inaugural professor of the endowed chair.
[20] Bianca Finzi-Contini Calabresi attended Yale as well, graduating summa cum laude, and has a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature from Columbia.