Brian Leiter's Legal Philosophy Blog

Which U.S. law school is best for "law and philosophy"?

Alas, dear readers, someone sent me a link to a Condorcet polling site, which made cooking up a new poll irresistible.  It tracks IP addresses, so no strategic voting!  And remember that 19th is the default ranking--if you don't want to score a school, choose 'no opinion.'

ALERT:  "L. Green" should have an # for part-time, not an * for 'over 70 in 2009' next to his name!  Sorry about that.

ANOTHER:  Gary Watson was wrongly omitted from the Southern California list--he is now roughly one-third in law, two-thirds in philosophy at USC since this past fall.

My Teaching Next Year at Chicago

A couple of folks have asked, so here's what's on the agenda:

I'll be doing the "Law and Philosophy Workshop" all year on the topic "Toleration and Religious Liberty."  This is cross-listed between the Law School and Philosophy Department, and is open to students in either unit, as well as others at the university; all students will need to submit a statement of interest and other information to be considered for admission (there are details at the link, above). Speakers at the workshop will include Joseph Raz, Simon Blackburn, Susan Mendus, Leslie Green, and Martha Nussbaum, as well as various legal scholars and legal theorists.

In the fall quarter, I'll be offering in the Law School the basic Jurisprudence I course (scroll down) covering the nature of law and the theory of adjudication.  In the Spring quarter, I'll offer Jurisprudence II (again, scroll down), which will cover "topics in moral, political, and legal theory."  I haven't fixed the precise topics yet, but Juris I won't be a prerequisite.  JD students get priority for these, though MA and PhD students from other units can take them as cognates.

Michael Forster and I have also been talking about doing some kind of informal reading group on Nietzsche during 08-09; he's on leave a good bit of next year, but we will have sorted out details by fall.  (We will probably offer a formal course/seminar for credit on some figures/topics in German philosophy in 2009-10.)

Please feel free to e-mail me with any questions.

June

June is likely to be fairly quiet here, unless I get the opportunity to write about some of the events I'm involved in while on the road.  June 18 I will be at the University of Girona for a day of legal philosophy seminars organized by Jordi Ferrer and Giovanni Ratti; these, I believe, are open to interested legal philosophers in the area, but you should contact Professor Ferrer for details.  A few days later I will be in Oslo for workshops on issues at the intersection of philosophy of language and law, organized by Stephen Neale (CUNY).  Prior to Girona, I'm speaking about Nietzsche at one of the NYU-sponsored conferences near Florence, but that is, I'm afraid, a "closed" event.  I hope to have some new items on the blog in July (a critique of John Goldberg on Cardozo and legal realism; a discussion of natural kinds, ducks, and natural law inspired by Mark Murphy) and may yet get up some thoughts in June. 

Spaak Reviews Me

Larry Solum (Illinois) kindly flagged for me that Torben Spaak, on the law faculty at Uppsala University in Sweden, has posted a review essay about my Naturalizing Jurisprudence collection.  I have just read through it quickly (as I'm heading out of town), but it seems a fair-minded engagement with my book (for which I thank Professor Spaak), and particularly interesting because of its contention that the Scandinavian Realists are the naturalists in jurisprudence to whom we should really pay heed.   (I've suggested previously that the Scandinavians demand more sympathetic attention, so I welcome his suggestion, though I'm not sure he is entirely sensitive, at least in this review essay, to the worries about the viability of their position.)  One small point:  Professor Spaak is mistaken in suggesting (at p. 3) that I think causal explanations rule out reason-based explanations.  I am, as I say at p. 4, a "relaxed" naturalist, meaning whatever works makes it into our ontology.  The Hempel/Dray debate Professor Spaak references is ancient history as far as genuinely methodological naturalism is concerned. 

Because I am on the road currently, comments (if there are any) may take longer than usual to appear.