Jurisprudence
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“Why Tolerate Religion?” in the Harvard Law Review (March 2013)
A nice short notice: "Why Tolerate Religion? is a readable book that exposes several tenuous assumptions underlying the predominant justifications for religious exemptions. At the same time, it provides a fresh and intuitive framework for analyzing conscience-based objections to facially neutral laws that should appeal to legal practitioners, jurists, and philosophers alike."
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“The Boundaries of the Moral (and Legal) Community”
This was a 2011 Meador Lecture at the University of Alabama. A number of readers gave me helpful comments on a draft that was on SSRN, and are acknowledged in the footnotes. Many thanks!
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Green on Dworkin
Another memorial for Ronald Dworkin, including an interesting observation by Leslie Green: Leslie Green, professor of the philosophy of law at Oxford, described Professor Dworkin as "one of the most important legal thinkers of our time", who "achieved this by his brilliance, originality and, especially, his unparalleled fearlessness in yoking together moral views that are…
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Dworkin-Lite and Constitutional Theory
Cass Sunstein (Harvard) gives a nice re-statement of those aspects of Dworkin's views that made him such an appealing figure in modern constitutional theory. Sunstein writes: Consider a question about which people fiercely disagree: Does the U.S. Constitution require states to recognize same-sex marriages? In answering that question, judges have to deal with many precedents.…
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“Legal Realisms, Old and New”
The final version (pending copy-editing), which was given as the 2012 Seegers Lecture in Jurisprudence this past fall at Valparaiso, and which will appear in their law review later this year.
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“Why Tolerate Religion” on the radio in Chicago
Here (hit "click play" at the center top if you'd like to listen).
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H.L.A. Hart Interviewed
Hart, along with Hans Kelsen, was one of the two great figures in legal philosophy of the past century. This wide-ranging interview a few years before his death covers the personal, professional, and intellectual. The quality of the audio is uneven, and a transcript is forthcoming. OUP has released the audio to mark the publication…
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John Gray on “Why Tolerate Religion?” in The New Statesman
I'm sure my pal Todd Zywicki will be posting this review of my book by the British political theorist John Gray soon on his blog, but just in case, here it is; an excerpt: “A model of clarity and rigour and at points strikingly original, this is a book that anyone who thinks seriously about religion, ethics and…
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“The Methodology of Legal Philosophy”
A draft of a new essay by Alex Langlinais (a philosophy grad student here at Chicago) and myself, to appear in the Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology, being edited by Cappelen, Gendler, and Hawthorne. Comments welcome.
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The Persistence of Fuller-Inspired Confusions about Legal Positivism
It is surprising, to those of us specializing in jurisprudence, how much staying power Lon Fuller's confusions have. This paper by Michael Sevel (Sydney) is a useful corrective.
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Why Tolerate Religion?
The book is finally out. Thanks to all those who had expressed interest in the project.
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“The Boundaries of the Moral (and Legal) Community”
The penultimate version (pending some publication editing) of my 2011 Meador Lecture, forthcoming in Alabam Law Review in 2013.
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Thomas Nagel’s new book “Mind and Cosmos”
Michael Weisberg (Penn) and I review it for The Nation. As some may know, Nagel has made some unfortunate and confused interventions into the debates about intelligent design creationism. This book is related, alas. Scholars interested in the constitutional issues about the teaching of evolution and creationism may, in particular, find this review of interest.
Sorry, in the *20* years since it was published.