HARVARD LEGAL THEORY FORUM

Hi everyone,

The next Legal Theory Forum meeting will be this coming Tuesday (Nov 02) at 7pm in Pound 418. Once again, we’re planning on serving dinner. This week we’ll be reading a CLS critique of law & economics. The text is an excerpt from Duncan Kennedy, Cost-Benefit Analysis of Entitlement Problems: A Critique, 33 Stanford Law Review 387 (1981). The article is rather long, so feel free to focus on pages 1-14 and 36-59 (that is: skip part III “The Offer-Asking Probllem”). The file is available here.

And for anyone who is interested on extra work, we recommend Duncan Kennedy’s entry in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law on “law-and-economics from the perspective of critical legal studies.” Available here.

Best,
Anthony & Gustavo

Hi,

Thanks to everyone who made it to the reading group last week. A few quick updates:

1) Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, October 19 at 7pm in Pound 203. Continuing with the Law & Econ theme, the reading for next week is a response to the Posner piece by Ronald Dworkin entitled “Is Wealth a Value?” Journal of Legal Studies, 9, 1980, pp.191-226 (available here).

We’ll be ordering food this time (Thai). If you can, please let us know in advance if you’re planning to come so we don’t order too much or too little.

2) Let us know if you’ve been working on a paper that you’d like to present or workshop.

3) We’d also like to pass on some information about the 2010 Harvard Graduate Conference in Political Theory.

The Department of Government (FAS) at Harvard University will host a conference for graduate students in political theory and political philosophy on November 5-6, 2010. The conference will take place at the Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS). All events will be held on the concourse level of the Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS) South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Additional information, including a detailed schedule, can be found here http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k16266 or by emailing or e-mail politicaltheory.harvard@gmail.com.

Cheers,
Anthony & Gustavo

Hi everyone!

Thanks to everyone who signed up for the Legal Theory Forum at the Student Activities Fair. I wanted to share two quick announcements and encourage everyone to attend our first meeting next week.

1) We’re planning our first session of the semester for Tuesday, October 5 at 7pm.

In the past Legal Theory Forum has read some canonical pieces in legal theory and also read works in social theory, philosophy, and political theory as they relate to the law. Several people have expressed interest in reading some theoretical works on Law & Economics, so we thought we would start with Richard Posner’s “The Ethical and Political Basis of the Efficiency Norm in Common Law Adjudication.” 8 Hofstra Law Review 487 (1979-80).

Depending on people’s interests, we could move on to another topic or go on and read some of the theoretical and normative debates surrounding the law & economics movement. The goal is to pick readings people are actually interested in discussing, and we can adjust as the semester goes on.

2) The HLS Program on the Legal Profession is sponsoring a Theory-Practice Colloquium modeled on the Summer Theory Institute. The Colloquium will be meeting five times during the academic year. They’ll be reading short excerpts from a number of social theorists and discussing those readings in the context of public interest law practice. I’d like to encourage anyone interested to apply. There’s more information available through the PLP website here: http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/plp/pages/theory-practice_colloquium.php.

If you have any questions or if you are interested in joining the board, please please email us: hltf@mail.law.harvard.edu.

I am passing along the following message from Dr. François-Xavier Licari, co-redactor in chief, Associate Professor, Metz Law School, France:

My institute of research has created a new trilingual (French, English, German) peer-reviewed electronic law journal: “Scientia Juris – Metz Law School Journal” : http://www.univ-metz.fr/ufr/dea/revue/

A call for paper in English (“Law and Borders”) (http://www.univ-metz.fr/ufr/dea/revue/appels/Law-and-borders.pdf) is already available.

Submissions outside this special subject are also possible.

A panel of students will be presenting works in progress on legal theory on Friday, April 16 in Hauser 104 at 3:00 PM. Snacks will be served.

Daniel Rosenthal, who will present, has his paper available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1579773.