HARVARD LEGAL THEORY FORUM

Jeremy Waldron (NYU), who is delivering the Holmes Lectures at Harvard Law School this coming week, will give a talk to the Harvard Legal Theory Forum on the topic “Poverty and Democracy” on Tuesday, October 6 in Pound 332.

Prof. Waldron will speak about the tension between modern, representative capitalist democracy and distributive justice: is it an inherent feature of modern democracy that there be deep structural material and power inequalities? At what point along the continuum do we move from living in a uncomfortably unequal democracy to not living in a democracy at all? How much inequality and poverty is compatible with democracy?

Relevant background reading is Waldron’s short essay in the 15 July 1999 London Review of books on “The Plight of Poor in the Midst of Plenty.”

Lunch will be provided.

If you wish to attend, please RSVP to hltf@law.harvard.edu.

Today and tomorrow, Boston University Law School is hosting a conference on Ronald Dworkin’s forthcoming book, Justice for Hedgehogs. Speakers include Dworkin, Richard Fallon, Lawrence Solum, Benjamin Zipursky, Anita Allen, Christine Jolls, T.M. Scanlon, Amartya Sen, Kwame Anthony Appiah, John Goldberg, Frances Kamm, Larry Sager, Robin West, Samuel Freeman, Stephen Macedo, Frank Michelman, Jeremy Waldron, and others. A flyer for the event is available here.

This Friday and Saturday, Harvard University is hosting a conference marking the hundredth anniversary of Isaiah Berlin’s birth. Speakers will include Svetlana Boym, Malachi Haim Hacohen, Janos Kis, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Martha Nussbaum, Alan Ryan, Amartya Sen, Michael Walzer, Bernard Yack, and others. A full schedule is available at the conference website.

The following announcement is from Professor Jordi Ferrer of the University of Girona (Spain).

Registration for the conference is now open.

The University of Giorona is hosting a congress celebrating the 50th volume of the series “Philosophy and Law”, published by Marcial Pons and co-edited by Professor Ferrer and Professor José Juan Moreso (University “Pompeu Fabra”, Barcelona).

The congress, devoted to the topic “Neutrality and Theory of Law”, will take place the 20th , 21st and 22nd of May 2010 in the Spanish city of Girona. The conference is conceived of as a meeting place for authors and readers of our books. For this reason twelve authors from the collection will be speakers at the event Dr. Robert Alexy, Dr. Juan C. Bayón, Dr. Brian Bix, Dr. Eugenio Bulygin, Dr. Bruno Celano, Dr. Jules L. Coleman, Dr. Riccardo Guastini, Dr. Brian Leiter, Dr. Jorge Luis Rodríguez, Dr. Frederick Schauer, Dr. Scott J. Shapiro, Dr. Wilfrid J. Waluchow. Our objective is to offer an event of great importance in the legal-philosophical debate that will gather and try to bridge different legal traditions.

The conference website is here.

Event: The Free Market Mindset: History, Psychology, and Consequences
Hosted by the Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School
Start Time: Saturday, March 7 at 9:00am
End Time: Saturday, March 7 at 6:00pm
Where: Harvard Law School, Austin Main

At this year’s conference, leading social scientists and legal scholars will present and discuss their research regarding the historical origins, psychological antecedents, and policy consequences of the free market ideology that has dominated legal discourse and lawmaking the last few decades.

To see more details and RSVP, go here.