Stephen R. Perry

John J. O’Brien Professor of Law & Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus

Stephen Perry is a prominent legal philosopher and legal theorist. Before taking up his current position at Penn, he taught at McGill University and was later the Fiorello La Guardia Professor of Law at NYU Law School.

He has published numerous well regarded articles on jurisprudence, political philosophy, and theoretical aspects of the law of torts. He is particularly interested in the methodology of jurisprudence, the general nature of authority and obligation in law, the role of corrective justice in tort law, the morality of risk imposition, and the relationship between legal and moral responsibility.

Perry is a sought-after lecturer and panelist. He has presented papers in many different venues, including the Analytic Legal Philosophy Conference and the Colloquium in Legal, Political and Social Philosophy at NYU Law School. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute.

In recent years he has been a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at King’s College, London, and he has taught an intensive course on political authority at the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University as well as at Zengzhou University Law School in China.

Featured Research

Torts, Rights, and Risk, in PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE LAW OF TORTS 38 (John Oberdiek ed., Oxford Univ. Press 2014).

Political Authority and Political Obligation in 2 OXFORD STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAW (Leslie Green & Brian Leiter eds., Oxford University Press, 2013)

Tort Law, in COMPANION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAW AND LEGAL THEORY 64 (Dennis Patterson ed., 2d ed. 2009).

Beyond the Distinction between Positivism and Non-Positivism, 22 RATIO JURIS 311 (2009).

The Role of Duty of Care in a Rights-Based Theory of Tort Law, in THE GOALS OF PRIVATE LAW 79 (Andrew Robertson & Tang Hang Wu eds., 2009).

Where Have All the Powers Gone? Hartian Rules of Recognition, Noncognitivism, and the Constitutional and Jurisprudential Foundations of Law, in THE RULE OF RECOGNITION AND THE U.S. CONSTITUTION (Matthew D. Adler & Kenneth Einar Himma eds., Oxford Univ. Press 2009).

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