Colloquium in Legal, Political, and Social Philosophy

The Colloquium in Legal, Political, and Social Philosophy was founded by Ronald Dworkin and Thomas Nagel in 1987. It is the original model for all of NYU Law’s colloquia. The Colloquium is now convened by Liam Murphy, Samuel Scheffler, and Jeremy Waldron, two of whom will host in any given year.

Each week on Thursday a legal theorist or moral or political philosopher presents a paper to the group, which consists of students, faculty from the Law School and other departments of NYU, and faculty from other universities. The choice of subject is left to the paper’s author, within the general boundaries of the Colloquium’s subjects, and the discussions are therefore not connected by any structured theme for the term as a whole, though in past years certain central topics were canvassed in several weeks’ discussion. The Colloquium aims, not to pursue any particular subject, but to explore new work in considerable depth and so allow students to develop their own skill in theoretical analysis. Each week’s paper is posted at least a week in advance, and participants are expected to have read it.

September 7

4:00 – 4:30  Welcome by Dean Trevor Morrison and acknowledgements

4:30 – 6:30  Session One

Thomas M. Scanlon (Harvard)
Commentator: Samuel Scheffler (NYU)
Chair: Liam Murphy (NYU)
September 8

10:00 – 12:00  Session Two

Frank Michelman (Harvard)
Commentator: Lawrence Sager (University of Texas, Austin)
Chair: Lewis Kornhauser (NYU)

12:00 – 2:00  Lunch

2:00 – 4:00   Session Three

Seana Shiffrin (UCLA)
Commentator: Liam Murphy (NYU)
Chair: Jeremy Waldron (NYU)

4:00 – 5:00 Break

5:00 – 7:00  Session Four

Joseph Raz (King’s College London and Columbia)
Commentator: Jeremy Waldron (NYU)
Chair: Samuel Scheffler

September 14
Daniel Viehoff, NYU

September 28
Grainne de Burca, NYU

October 5 
Samuel Freeman, University of Pennsylvania

October 12
Jerry Gaus, Arizona University

October 19
Robert Gooding –Williams, Columbia University

October 26
Susan Wolf, University of North Carolina

November 2nd 
Ekow Yankah, Cardozo University

November 9 
David Luban, Georgetown University

November 16
Laura Valentini, London School of Economics

November 30
Juliana Bidadanure, Stanford University

December 7
Debra Satz, Stanford University