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INSTITUTE FOR LAW & PHILOSOPHY

The University of Pennsylvania Law School has one of the most active programs anywhere in law and philosophy, and encourages interdisciplinary work with Penn's philosophy department, as well as with the numerous philosophy departments at other universities in the area. The Institute for Law and Philosophy brings together a large number of scholars for the purpose of discussing the application of legal theory to contemporary legal, moral and political issues. Topics are debated and discussed at the Institute's regularly scheduled faculty workshops, featuring guest speakers who present papers on their current research interests.

Stephen Perry, Director of the Institute for Law & Philosophy
For further information: please contact Anna Gavin, Administrative Assistant, at agavin@law.upenn.edu.

FALL 2007

Monday, October 15

Professor Robert Paul Wolff, Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Title: "The Future of Socialism"
View Paper (PDF)
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.

Tuesday, October 30

Professor Jeff McMahan, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University - New Brunswick
Title: The Morality of War and the Law of War
View Paper (PDF)
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 12:00 - 1:30 p.m.

Thursday, December 6

Professor David Enoch, Department of Philosophy, Hebrew University
Title: "Intending, Foreseeing, and the State"
View Paper (PDF)
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Note: This workshop was orignally scheduled for December 11.

SPRING 2008

Monday, February 11

Professor John Gardner, Professor of Jurisprudence, Oxford University
Title: Introduction to the second edition of H.L.A. Hart's Punishment and Responsibility
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.

Monday, March 3

Professor Christopher Kutz, Boalt Hall Law School, University of California at Berkeley
Title: Against Political Luck
View Paper (PDF)
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
(Note: This workshop was originally scheduled for February 11.)

Monday, April 7

Professor Jody Kraus, University of Virginia Law School
Title: Correspondence and Divergence in Contract and Promise
View Paper (PDF)
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.

FALL 2006

Thursday, October 19

Professor Susan Haack, Professor of Philosophy and Law, University of Miami
Title: "On Legal Pragmatism: Where Does 'The Path of the Law' Lead Us?"
View Paper (PDF)
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.

Monday, October 30

Professor Les Green,Professor of Law and Philosophy, Osgoode Hall Law
School
Title: "The Germ of Justice"
View Paper (PDF)
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 4:30 - 6:00 p.m.

Thursday, November 30

Professor Jules Coleman, Hohfeld Professor of Jurisprudence and Professor of Philosophy, Yale Law School
Title: "Against Jurisprudence"
View Paper (PDF)
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 4:30 - 6:00 p.m.

Tuesday, December 12

Professor Jeremy Waldron, NYU Law School
Title: "Safety and Security"
View Paper (PDF)
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.

SPRING 2007

Monday, February 5

Professor Peter Benson, University of Toronto Law School
Title: Robins Dry Dock and the Law of Negligence: A Rights-Based Rationale for the Economic Loss Rule.
View Paper (PDF)
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 12:00 - 1:30 p.m.

Monday, March 12

Professor Brian Leiter, Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Texas Law School
Professor Michael Weisberg, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania
Title: "Why Evolutionary Biology (so far) is Irrelevant to Law"
View Paper (PDF)
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.

Monday, March 26

Professor Michael Green of William and Mary Law School
Title: “Natural Rights Arguments for the Second Amendment”
View Paper (PDF)
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 12:00 - 1:30 p.m.

Monday, April 9

Cancelled: To be rescheduled for the Fall Semester, 2007
Professor Jeff McMahan, Rutgers University Department of Philosophy
Title: TBA
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.

Wednesday, April 18

Professor Michael Moore, Charles R. Walgreen Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law
Title: Causing, Aiding, and the Superfluity of Accomplice Liability
View Paper (PDF)
Location: Faculty Lounge
Time: 12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
(co-sponsored with Legal Studies)

CONFERENCES 2006-2007

FRIDAY, MAY 18 - SATURDAY, MAY 19, 2007

Conference on Sharp Boundaries and the Law

In recent years an interesting problem has independently attracted the attention of both philosophers and legal scholars. The problem, simply put, is why legal and moral concepts tend to have fairly sharp boundaries when the reality on which they are imposed does not. Most phenomena, on close scrutiny, seem to present themselves along a continuum. Things aren't just hot or cold, good or bad, hairy or bald: Temperature, goodness, and baldness seem, rather, to be a matter of degree. But most of the time both law and morality proceed as though they were not. Those who argue against abortion assume that there is a magic point at which life starts. Those who wish to distinguish between informed and uninformed consent assume that there is a magic point at which informedness ends and ignorance begins, or at which voluntariness ends and coercion begins. Much of the difficulty we have with moral and legal decision-making seems to derive from the insistence on this assumption. The aim of this conference, which will take the form of a roundtable discussion of previously distributed readings, is to bring together people working in different fields whose work has bearing on this issue.

Conference Organizer: Professor Leo Katz
Attendance by invitation only

TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2007

Second Annual PENN-UNAM Conference
Topic: Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy
Location: Penn Philosophy Department, Logan Hall, 4th floor
Time: 10:00 a.m. - 5:45 p.m.

Session I: 10 a.m. - 12 noon
Professor Adrienne Martin (Penn Philosophy): "Hope and Exploitation"
Professor Corina de Yturbe (UNAM): "Out of the Ruins: Inventing the Mexican Nation"

Session II: 1:30 - 3:30pm
Professor Samuel Freeman (Penn Philosophy): "Democracy and the Contractarian Justification of Judicial Review"
Professor Faviola Rivera Castro (UNAM): "Peace as the Highest Political Good"

Session III: 3:45 - 5:45pm
Professor Stephen Perry (Penn Law): "Two Problems of Political Authority"
Professor Juan Antonio Cruz (UNAM): "Social Rights: Some Problems of the New Approaches"

This conference is being cosponsored by:
Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
The School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
The Institute for Law and Philosophy, Law School, University of Pennsylvania
Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania
The Philosophy Department, University of Pennsylvania

Saturday, March 24, 2007

A Conference on Justice and the Social Contract
Location: University of Pennsylvania (details TBA)
Time: 1:00 - 6:00 p.m.

Presenters:
Thomas Pogge: Columbia University Department of Philosophy
Samuel Scheffler: University of California at Berkeley, Department of Philosophy
Professor Henry Richardson, Georgetown University Department of Philosophy

Respondent:
Samuel Freeman: Univerisity of Pennsylvania Department of Philosophy

This is a conference in honor and celebration of the publication of Samuel Freeman's book, "Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy" (Oxford University Press). The event is being co-sponsored by the Program in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE); the Institute for Law and Philosophy; and the Department of Philosophy.