Balzan Conference: Dworkin's Late Work September 13-14, 2019

Ronald Dworkin’s work always spanned a wide array of topics, from the most abstract jurisprudence through the details of American constitutional law all the way over to political philosophy and theories of justice and equality.  In the last decades of his life, however, Dworkin’s work flowered in ways that went beyond even this prodigious range.  Though he continued his central work in the philosophy of law and constitutional theory, he also addressed issues in international law, human dignity, the philosophy of religion, the relation between ethics, morality and legal theory, and the unity of practical thought generally.  This conference will explore some of these themes in Dworkin’s late work.  Beginning with a panel on his understanding of religion, we will also convene discussions of his work on legal integrity, international law, and the relation between law and morality.  There will be a total of nine presentations, with plenty of time for discussion.  All are welcome.

The conference begins, with the first panel (on religion) at 1:30 pm on Friday, September 13 in the Lester Pollack Room in Furman Hall, at NYU Law School (view campus map). (This is the room where the Colloquium in Legal, Social, and Political Philosophy is usually held.)  The second panel starts at 4:30 pm on Friday.  On Saturday, September 14, we begin at 10 am with a panel on integrity, and we finish with a panel on Justice for Hedgehogs beginning at 2:15pm.

Panel 1 (Friday 1:30 p.m.): Dworkin’s Religion without God.
Eric Gregory (Princeton) Confessions of a Religious Liberal: Ronald Dworkin’s Religion Without God
Moshe Halbertal (NYU and Hebrew U.) Ronald Dworkin Religion Without God: Morality and the Transcendent
Larry Sager (Texas) Solving Religious Liberty

Panel 2 (Friday 4:30 p.m.): Dworkin on international law.
Samantha Besson (Fribourg)
The Political Legitimacy of International Law: Sovereign States and their International Institutional Order
Paper removed at the request of the author.

John Tasioulas (King’s College, London) 
‘Fantasy Upon Fantasy’: Some Reflections on Dworkin’s Philosophy of International Law

Panel 3 (Saturday 10 a.m.): The idea of integrity in Law’s Empire.
Andrei Marmor (Cornell) Integrity in Law’s Empire
Jeremy Waldron (NYU)  The Rise and Decline of Integrity

Panel 4 (Saturday 2:15 p.m.): Law and morality in Justice for Hedgehogs.
Mark Greenberg (UCLA)
What Makes a Moral Duty Legal?  Dworkin’s Judicial Enforcement Theory Versus the Moral Impact Theory

Ben Zipursky (Fordham) Jurisprudence in Justice for Hedgehogs: Metaphysical, not Political