Center for Law & Philosophy

About the Program

Philosophical problems rest at the heart of each area of law. Criminal law punishes people for wronging others, but what conduct is wrong exactly, and do current criminal laws prohibit only such conduct? Civil rights law prohibits discrimination, but what kinds of differential treatment are morally troubling and why? Family law governs relationships among adults and between adults and children, but what right does the state have to intervene in our personal affairs and what rights and responsibilities do parents with respect to children? Constitutional law offers special protection for freedom of speech and religion, but are speech and religion really special?

Legal philosophy also asks foundational questions about the nature of law and about which methods of legal interpretation are most justified. To discern the rule created by a statute, should judges look only at its text or may they also look to the purpose of its drafters? Should courts be bound by the rulings of past judges, and to what extent? Do our answers to these interpretive questions differ when it comes to the Constitution? Finally, jurisprudence interrogates ideas about law that underlie all these debates. When does a rule qualify as a rule of “law,” as distinct from a rule of morality or etiquette? Law purports to bind citizens and officials. Is law simply a system of rules issued by an authority and enforced with coercion, or must a law be minimally just to count as binding? In any case, what is an “authority,” and what makes an authority legitimate?

These questions of legal philosophy are not merely academic. They bear on pressing questions of social justice. The moral and philosophical assumptions that structure our current law may be justified or may be ripe for critique and revision. The Virginia faculty associated with the Center for Law & Philosophy investigate each of these questions, as well as many others. The center also facilitates exceptional scholarship through its Legal Theory Workshop and occasional symposia. We look forward to examining these questions with our students.

The Surveilled Student

Danielle K. Citron

We live in a golden age of student surveillance. Some surveillance is old school: video cameras, school resource officers, and tip lines. Old-school...

Big Data and Compounding Injustice

Deborah Hellman

This article argues that the fact that an action will compound a prior injustice counts as a reason against doing the action. I call this reason The...

Introduction: The Nature of the Judicial Process at 100

Charles Barzun

John C.P. Goldberg

This special issue of the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities contains papers presented at a March 2022 conference at Yale Law School marking the...

Precedent and Similarity

Frederick Schauer

Barbara A. Spellman

Given that no two acts, events, situations, and legal cases are identical, precedential constraint necessarily involves determining which two...

Alzheimer’s, Advance Directives, and Interpretive Authority

Charles Barzun

Philosophers have debated whether the advance directives of Alzheimer’s patients should be enforced, even if patients seem content in their demented...

Taking Experience Seriously: A Comment on Professor Zipursky’s “Benjamin Cardozo and American Natural Law Theory”

Charles Barzun

This short essay considers Benjamin Zipursky’s intriguing effort to identify a tradition of “American natural law theory” that links Benjamin Cardozo...

News

Professor Wins AALS Award for Paper on Federal Courts

Judges Teach Classes on Navigating Courtrooms, Legal Rules

Education Rights Institute Launches at UVA Law

All News

Faculty Director

Deborah Hellman

Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law

F. Palmer Weber Research Professor of Civil Liberties and Human Rights

Director, Center for Law & Philosophy

Resident Faculty

Richard M. Re

Criminal procedure, federal courts and constitutional law

Clerked for Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court
His research garnered attention in 2018 as part of an amicus brief he wrote for the Supreme Court case Hughes v. United States
Runs the blog Re's Judicata and is a member of PrawfsBlog

Charles Barzun

Evidence, torts, jurisprudence and legal history, constitutional law

Clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Former Climenko Fellow and lecturer, Harvard Law School
Barzun's research fcuses on the interdependence of the philosophy of law and the history of law.

Deborah Hellman

Affirmative action and equal protection, constitutional law and theory

Awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers in 1999
Author of the book "When Is Discrimination Wrong?"
Hellman's work primarily focuses on discrimination and equality. In addition, she writes about the constitutionality of campaign finance laws and the obligations of professional roles, especially in the context of clinical medical research. (Scholarship Profile | Faculty Q&A)

George Rutherglen

Employment discrimination, civil rights and admiralty, civil procedure and international civil litigation

Clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justices William O. Douglas and John Paul Stevens, and forJudge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Chaired the advisory committee on Fourth Circuit Rules
Rutherglen's book, "Civil Rights in the Shadow of Slavery," discusses the dynamics of legislative and judicial enforcement over the entire history of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. (Story)

Frederick Schauer

Constitutional law, evidence and legal reasoning, philosophy of law

Frank Stanton Professor the First Amendment, Emeritus, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (also taught courses on evidence and freedom of speech at Harvard Law School)
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a former fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
Author of numerous books and articles, including "Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning" and "The Force of Law" (forthcoming in 2015) (Faculty Q&A)
Was founding co-editor of the journal Legal Theory

Leslie Kendrick

First Amendment, constitutional law and torts

Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, where she received her master's and doctorate in English literature
Clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter and for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
Scholarly research has focused on free speech (Faculty Q&A), including the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretations (C-SPAN Supreme Court Term Preview)
Received the Law School’s Carl McFarland Prize for outstanding research (Story)

Micah J. Schwartzman

Law and religion, jurisprudence and political philosophy

Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he received his doctorate in politics
Clerked for Judge Paul V. Niemeyer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
Received the Law School’s Carl McFarland Prize for outstanding research (Story)
Schwartzman's scholarship has explored the First Amendment's religion clauses, the free exercise clause and the establishment clause. He is the co-editor of "The Rise of Corporate Religious Liberty." (More)

Richard C. Schragger

Separation of church and state, property, local government and land use

M.A. in legal theory, University College London
Clerked for then-Chief Judge Dolores Sloviter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Authored articles on the establishment clause and local regulation of religion, the role of cities in a federal system, local recognition of same-sex marriage, takings law and economic development, and the history of the anti-chain store movement. (Faculty Q&A)

Lawrence B. Solum

Legal theory, constitutional theory, procedure, philosophy of law

His series of articles on constitutional originalism have shaped contemporary thinking about the debate between originalism and constitutional theory
Editor of Legal Theory Blog, an influential weblog that focuses on developments in contemporary normative and positive legal theory
Also works on problems of law and technology, including Internet governance, copyright policy and patent law

Gregg Strauss

Domestic relations and family law

Ph.D. in philosophy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Recent scholarship has revolved around defining a theory behind marriage, including why the state is involved in licensing marriages at all
Teaches Family Law and Torts

Josh Bowers

Criminal procedure and criminal defense law

Clerked for Judge Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Practiced criminal defense as an associate for Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason & Silberberg and as staff attorney for the Bronx Defenders
Scholarship often focuses on fairness for the accused in the legal system (Faculty Q&A)

Steven D. Walt

Contracts, sales/commercial paper, legal philosophy, bankruptcy and secured transactions

Ph.D. and M.A. in philosophy, University of Chicago
Has received several academic awards, including a Whiting National Fellowship in the Humanities
Co-author of two popular casebooks, "Secured Transactions in Personal Property" and "Payments and Credits"

Naomi R. Cahn

Family law, trusts and estates, feminist jurisprudence, reproductive technology, and aging and the law

Her books include “Red Families v. Blue Families,” “Homeward Bound” and “Unequal Family Lives,” as well as casebooks in family law and trusts and estates
Serves as the reporter for the Uniform Law Commission Drafting Committee on Economic Rights of Unmarried Cohabitants, and a member of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and the American Law Institute
Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and New Yorker, and she has appeared on numerous media outlets, including NPR and MSNBC
From 2002-04, Cahn was on leave in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and researched gender-based violence

Anne M. Coughlin

Criminal law, feminist jurisprudence and women's issues

Clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. and Judge Jon O. Newman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Co-authored the casebook "Criminal Law: Cases and Materials"
In 2012 Coughlin and a group of law students using the moniker "The Molly Pitcher Project" helped file a lawsuit on behalf of military women seeking to overturn the combat exclusion. (Story)

Rachel Bayefsky

Federal courts, constitutional law, civil procedure, legal theory

Clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
Former lecturer and Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School
Practiced appellate litigation
Scholarship often focuses on legal institutions’ treatment of intangible harms such as stigma and disrespect

Other Faculty

Neil Duxbury

Paul Halliday

Global legal history, especially England and the British Empire

Writes about the legal history of Britain and its empire from the 16th century to the 19th. His most recent book, "Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire," was published by Harvard University Press in 2010 and won the 2011 Inner Temple Book Prize
Frequently consults in the writing of briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court on issues connected to English legal history
Halliday's research has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation and the American Philosophical Society

Abraham Sutherland

The program is committed to offering courses each year that reflect an interdisciplinary law and humanities perspective. Students can also find relevant courses in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. See the school's dual-degree programs.

The following is a list of courses offered during the current and two previous academic years. Numbers in parentheses indicate which academic year(s) the courses were offered, i.e., 2020-21 is coded (21), 2021-22 is coded (22) and 2022-23 is coded (23). (SC) stands for short course and (YR) stands for yearlong.

Courses and Seminars

Constitutionalism: History and Jurisprudence (21)
Critical Race Theory (23)
Dignity Law Seminar (23)
Discrimination Theory (21,22)
Feminist Jurisprudence (21,22,23)
Jurisprudence (21,22)
Law and Theories of Justice (23)
Law of Corruption (21,23)
Legal Theory in Europe and the U.S.: A Very Brief Introduction (SC) (21,22,23)
Legal Theory Workshop Seminar (22)
Liberalism and Its Critics (21,22,23)
Philosophical Legal Ethics (SC) (23)
Reproductive Ethics and Law (SC) (21,22,23)
Rule of Law and Threats to It (21,23)
Rules (21,22)
Social Identity, Critical Theory and the Law (SC) (22,23)

Center for Law & Philosophy

Courses and Seminars

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A Theory of Justice: 50 Years Later