"[5][6] In 2021, Ramseyer came under scrutiny for a preprint article released by the International Review of Law and Economics which argued that comfort women conscripted under Japanese imperial rule were primarily voluntary prostitutes.
[9] The child of Mennonite missionary parents, Ramseyer lived in Kyushu's Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan through the age of 18 and is fluent in Japanese.
After clerking for Judge Stephen Breyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, Ramseyer practiced law at Chicago's Sidley & Austin.
"[14] Harel also said, "I genuinely regret that a misguided description of the history can be found now in the SSRN (and that we are associated with it), but I assure you that the mistake will not be repeated in the forthcoming volume.
[16][17] In 2021, controversy arose when the International Review of Law and Economics published an online pre-print of an article by Ramseyer that challenged the narrative that comfort women were coerced into sexual servitude in Japanese military brothels in the 1930s and 1940s.
[9] In February, Ramseyer's Harvard colleagues in History and East Asian Studies Professors Andrew Gordon and Carter Eckert submitted a statement critical of Ramseyer's article to the International Review of Law and Economics asking that the journal delay formal publication until it had been approved by further expert peer review.
[24][25] Harvard Law School Professor Jeannie Suk Gersen then published an article in The New Yorker, translated into Korean and Japanese in March, describing the effects of Ramseyer's "dubious scholarship" on Japan-South Korea relations and scholars' reactions.
[33] The authors of the four articles accused Ramseyer of "serious violations of scholarly standards and methods that strike at the heart of academic integrity,"[34] including misrepresentations of Japanese sources and inaccurate citation practices.
[42][43] In the response, Ramseyer stood by the majority of his significant claims, writing "Korean women were not programmatically and forcibly conscripted by Japanese soldiers in Korea into comfort station work.
"[44] Ramseyer asserted that "courageous scholars in Korea are increasingly speaking out" against the narrative that comfort women were compelled to perform their work.