HARVARD LEGAL THEORY FORUM

Hi everyone,

The Legal Theory Forum will hold the last meeting of the semester next Wednesday April
20 at noon in Lewis 102. Lunch will be served.

For that meeting, we will discuss a working paper by Gustavo Ribeiro, a current LLM
candidate. The tentative title is: “No Need to Toss a Coin: Conflicting Scientific
Expert Testimonies and Intellectual Due Process.” The article is available upon
request by emailing gribeiro@llm11.law.harvard.edu.

We look forward to seeing you all next week.

Best,
Gustavo & Anthony

Hi! Hope everyone’s enjoying the break.

Continuing with the topic of legal pragmatism, we will hold our
second meeting on Thursday, March 24 at 7:15pm in Pound 418. For
that meeting, we will read and discuss a great piece by William
H. Simon, “Solving Problems vs. Claiming Rights: The Pragmatist
Challenge to Legal Liberalism.” The article is available here.

Non-pizza dinner will be provided. We look forward to seeing you
all next week.

Best,
Anthony & Gustavo

Hello everyone!

The new semester is off to a good start, and now so is Legal Theory Forum. As we discussed in the fall, we will dedicate this semester to reading some texts on legal pragmatism.

We will have our first meeting of the semester this coming Tuesday, February 15 at 7:15pm in Pound 203. Dinner will be provided. For Tuesday, we’re going to start with two short background readings on philosophical pragmatism. The first is a short chapter on the European origins of pragmatism from Native Pragmatism: Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy by Scott L. Pratt. The other is a short text by Williams James, What Pragmatism Means. Both of these pieces are available here and here.

Also, we would like your help to have some more events this coming semester. If you have any academic papers you would like to present or have workshopped, please contact us ASAP, and we can try to schedule a time. Or, if there is a professor or speaker you would like to have present, we have a budget and would be happy to help facilitate and sponsor a lunchtime talk.

We look forward to seeing you all next week.

Sincerely,
Anthony & Gustavo

I know it’s a busy time of the semester, but I wanted to pass along informationabout two talks that might be of interest:

Jon Elster will be speaking on Thursday, December 2 at 4:30pm in Ames Courtroomon “Secrecy and Publicity in Jury Proceedings” as part of the Edmond J. Safra Centerfor Ethics Public Lecture Series. Jon Elster is Robert K. Merton Professor of SocialSciences at Columbia University, and his research interests include: Constitution-Making, Theory of Rational Choice, History of Political Thought (Tocqueville andMarx), Empirical Studies of Justice, Emotions and Social Theory.

Ronald Dworkin (professor of philosophy, and Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law,New York University) will be speaking on Friday, December 3 at 4:00pm on “Truth inInterpretation.” The event will take place in Emerson 105 at Harvard College and is sponsored by The Humanities Center at Harvard andHarvard Law School.

Hello:

The last Legal Theory Forum meeting of the semester will be Monday, Nov. 29, Pound 207. Food will be provided.

For the last session we’ll be reading two shorter pieces by Posner, representing his shift towards pragmatism. The first reading is the Pragmatist Manifesto (from Problems of Jurisprudence), which provides a brief theoretical overview of pragmatist jurisprudence. The second reading, a chapter on Pragmatism (from The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory), gives some concrete examples of pragmatic adjudication. If you’re pressed for time, feel free to focus on the first, although the second provides helpful illustrations.

The readings are available here.

Looking forward to seeing you.

Best,
Anthony & Gustavo