HARVARD LEGAL THEORY FORUM

The Legal Theory Reading group will not be meeting this evening, but will have its last meeting of the semester on December 8 at 8 PM. Details to follow.

The Legal Theory Reading Group will meet on Tuesday at 7:30 (note the change from the Wednesday meeting time) in Hauser 103.

We will discuss Brian Leiter on “Legal Realism and Legal Positivism Reconsidered,” 111 Ethics 278 (2001), http://www.journals.uchicago.edu.ezp-pro…, which argues that while legal positivism is a theory of law, legal realism is a theory of adjudication. Conceptually, then, there is no conflict between the two theories. At the empirical level, there is a genuine disagreement between the two theories, but positivism has no good arguments against the realist empirical account. (24 journal pages).

Keynote Speakers:
Andrei Marmor (USC)
Wil Waluchow (McMaster University)

Conference fee: $20.00

We are currently accepting submissions from graduate students and law students from all universities for presentations relating to all areas
within the general sphere of legal theory – including, but not limited to:

General and Normative Jurisprudence
Inclusive and Exclusive Legal Positivism
Law and Morality
Judicial Review / Judicial Activism / Theories of the Judicial Role
Constitutionalism
Feminist Approaches to Legal Theory / Critical Legal Studies
History of Legal Philosophy
The Hart/Dworkin and the Hart/Fuller Debates
Law and Authority
Controversies related to all areas of Canadian law (criminal law, administrative law, etc…)
International Law

Papers should be approximately 3000-4000 words in length and be either in pdf or word format with all self-identifying features removed. Each presenter will be given a one hour slot, of which 25-30 minutes will be dedicated to the reading of the paper, with the other 30-35 minutes dedicated to participant responses. An abstract of 100-200 words should accompany all papers. All papers and abstracts must be submitted no later than January 13, 2010.

A panel of legal philosophy graduate students and professors at McMaster will review submissions using criteria of interest,
sophistication, and general overlap with similar themes. All papers will be subject to blind review. Notice of acceptance will be given on February 7. Papers will be posted on the conference website: http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~philo… so that interested attendees can review them in advance.

While only graduate and law student papers will be accepted for presentation, all students, faculty, or persons with interest in legal
theory are welcome to attend.

Please send papers and abstracts, together with your name, contact information, and home university to:  philosophy_conference at mcmaster.ca

From Philosophy CFPs.

The Harvard Graduate Conference in Political Theory would like to invite graduate and law students to the third annual Harvard Graduate Conference in Political Theory next weekend (Oct. 30-31).

The Keynote Address will be given by Prof. Bonnie Honig: “Antigone, Interrupted: Humanism and the Future of Democratic Theory” on Friday Oct. 30 at 3:30pm in the Tsai Auditorium (1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge MA 02138).

The graduate student panels are on Toleration, Liberalism and Legitimacy, Representation and Accountability, Nietzsche, and Politics and Culture. For more information, please look at the conference website or email  theorycon09.harvard at gmail.com for more information.

The Legal Theory Reading Group will meet on Wednesday, October 28, at 7:30 PM in Lewis International Law Center Room 301. We will discuss two sections of Toqueville’s “Democracy in America” and a recent article discussing American judges’ use of Toqueville.

The selections from Tocqueville are:

- Vol. I, Part Two, Ch. 6 [sometimes numbered Ch. 14]–particularly the sections under the headings, “General Tendency of the Laws under American Democracy…” and “Respect for Law in the United States…”

- Vol. I, Part Two, Ch. 8 [sometimes numbered Ch. 16]–particularly the section under the heading, “The Temper of the Legal Profession in the United States…”

Reading some of the surrounding material (e.g., Ch. 7 [sometimes numbered 15], in between the two cited here) would also be helpful, but isn’t necessary.

Jonathan Bruno recommends the translation by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, published by the UChicago Press in 2000. But the free translation posted online and linked above is also good enough for our purposes.

The recent article (which is short, 14 pp. double spaced) to discuss in connection with Toqueville is Christine A. Corcos on “A Man for All Reasons: The Use of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Writing in U.S. Judicial Opinions,” a short article describing how courts in the U.S. have used citations to Tocqueville.