Mark D. White

Below are details of a fascinating symposium which will be held at Georgetown Law in April:

Rationality in Law and Legal Theory: An Ethics Symposium

April 12-13, 2013

Both the law and legal theory make use of the notion of rationality.  Within legal theory both positivists and natural law theorists have put forward theses about rationality in order to support their accounts of the nature of legality. And the law itself is rife with appeals to rationality — for example, in tort law, to specify the general duty of care violation of which constitutes negligence, and in criminal law, to fill out various standard excuses (duress, mistake, provocation, etc.). The aim of this symposium is to bring together philosophers and legal theorists to examine these notions of rationality within their own disciplines and to consider the relationship between rationality as it is conceived within the law and as it has been conceived in legal theory.  Speakers include Marcia Baron (St. Andrews), Heidi Li Feldman (Georgetown), Claire Finkelstein (Penn), John Gardner (Oxford), Scott Hershovitz (Michigan), and Lewis Kornhauser (NYU).

Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at Georgetown University and the Georgetown University Law Center

Registration for this event is complimentary, but is required. Please complete our online registration form.