The Colloquium in Legal, Political, and Social Philosophy was founded by Ronald Dworkin and Thomas Nagel in 1987. It is the original model for all of NYU Law's colloquia. The Colloquium is now convened by Liam Murphy, Samuel Scheffler, and Jeremy Waldron, two of whom will host in any given year.
Each week on Thursday a legal theorist or moral or political philosopher presents a paper to the group, which consists of students, faculty from the Law School and other departments of NYU, and faculty from other universities. The choice of subject is left to the paper’s author, within the general boundaries of the Colloquium’s subjects, and the discussions are therefore not connected by any structured theme for the term as a whole, though in past years certain central topics were canvassed in several weeks’ discussion. The Colloquium aims, not to pursue any particular subject, but to explore new work in considerable depth and so allow students to develop their own skill in theoretical analysis.
Each week’s paper is posted at least a week in advance on this page, and participants are expected to have read it.
The public sessions of the colloquium will take place on Thursdays, in Lester Pollock Colloquium Room, Furman Hall, 9th floor, from 4:00 to 7:00 pm.
Students applying for credit:
Admission to the seminar is only by the professor’s permission. Students wishing to take the colloquium for credit should send their applications via e-mail stating their background in Law and philosophy and their interest in the colloquium to Professors Waldron and Scheffler, between July 1 and July 31.
Before you submit your application, if you are a non-Law student, please check with Academic Services if you are eligible to apply. In your application please mention if you are enrolled in an NYU program and use the subject line Colloquium in Legal, Political and Social Philosophy Application for Fall 2022.
Students enrolled in the Colloquium meet separately with Professors Waldron and Scheffler for an additional two-hour seminar on Wednesdays. One hour is devoted to a review of the preceding Thursday’s Colloquium discussion, and one hour in preparation for the Colloquium of the following day. Students are asked to write short papers weekly, and each student is asked to make two or more oral presentations to the seminar during the term. Each student is asked to expand one of his/her weekly papers, or oral presentations, for a final term paper.
Colloquium 2022
Professors Jeremy Waldron and Samuel Scheffler
September 8th
Brian Leiter, University of Chicago
Chapters on Marx in the Routledge Philosophers Series
September 15th
Sophia Moreau, University of Toronto
Morality and Role Obligations (PDF: 296KB )
September 22nd
Zofia Stemplowska, Oxford University
For Whom the Bell Tolls? Salient Commemoration (PDF: 526 KB)
September 29th
Helene Landemore, Yale University
Can AI bring deliberative democracy to the masses (PDF: 312 KB)
October 6th
David Miller, Oxford University
Compensation for Historic Injustice (PDF: 698 KB)
October 13th
Sharon Street, NYU
On Recognizing Oneself in Others
October 20th
Philip Kitcher, Columbia University
Progressive Valuation (PDF:450 KB)
October 27th
Ryan Pevnick, NYU
The Epistemic Appeal of Representative Democracy (PDF:400 KB)
November 3rd
David Dyzenhaus, University of Toronto
The Legal Experience of Injustice (PDF:267KB)
November 10th
Brandon Terry, Harvard University
Irony and the Politics of Pessimism in African American History and Philosophy (PDF: 644 KB)
November 17th
Sarah Song, University of California at Berkeley
Immigrant Legalization (PDF: 406 KB)
December 1st
Josh Cohen, Apple University, University of California at Berkeley
Reflections on Democracy’s Fragility (PDF: 1216KB)
Colloquium 2021
Professors Liam Murphy and Samuel Scheffler
September 2nd
Kim Ferzan, University of Pennsylvania, Law
Rethinking Credit for Time Served
September 9th
Liam Murphy, NYU
International Responsibility for Global Environment Harm: Collective and Individual
September 17th ( Friday 2.00-5.00)
Moshe Halbertal, NYU
On Being Human
September 23rd
Jeff McMahan, Oxford
"It Might Have Been!": What Matters in Alternative Possible Lives
September 30th
Emma Kaufman, NYU Law
Territoriality in American Criminal Law
October 7th
Rick Pildes, NYU Law
Political Fragmentation in Democracies of the West
October 14th
Samuel Scheffler, NYU
The Lives We Lead
Lecture 1 - Against Temporal Neutrality : The Significance of Future Bias
Lecture 2 - Against Personal Neutrality: The Significance of Partiality
October 21st
Steve Darwall, Yale, Philosophy
Why Obligations Can' Be Relational (Bipolar) All The Way Down
Below are two papers that might provide useful background:
Bipolar Obligation
and
What Are Moral Reasons?
October 28th
Chris Kutz, University of California, Berkeley, Law
November 4th
Anthony Appiah, NYU
Pandemic Lessons: The Philosophy of Work and the Modularity of Professional Ethics
November 11th
Johann Frick, University of California, Berkeley, Philosophy
Dilemmas, Luck, and the Two Faces of Morality
November 18th
Teresa Bejan, Oxford
Peers and Equals
December 2nd
Ruth Chang, Oxford
FALL 2020
Professors Jeremy Waldron and Liam Murphy
Schedule of Speakers
September 3
Samuel Scheffler, NYU
Procreation, Immigration, and the Future of Humanity
September 10th
Aditi Bagchi, Fordham
Moral Collective Action Problems and the Timing of Legal Rules
September 17th
Lewis Kornhauser, NYU
An Achievement Concept of Law
September 24th
Tommie Shelby, Harvard
Functional Critiques of Prisons
October 1st
Jeremy Waldron, NYU
October 8th
Rebecca Stone, UCLA
Normative Uncertainty, Normative Powers, and Limits on Freedom of Contract
October 15th
Andrei Marmor, Cornell
Rationalizing Practices and the Hermeneutic Challenge
October 22nd
Richard Fallon, Harvard
The Chimerical Concept of Original Public Meaning
October 29th
Katja Vogt, Columbia
Law and the Metaethics of Discord
November 5th
Liam Murphy, NYU
Nonlegislative Justification: Against Legalist Moral Theory
November 12th
Frances Kamm, Rutgers
Torture: Rescue, Prevention, and Punishment
November 19th
Sally Haslanger, MIT
Political Epistemology and Social Critique
December 3rd
David Estlund, Brown University
What's Unjust about Structural Injustice?
FALL 2019
SPECIAL“POP-UP” session on Thursday, October 17 from 4-7 p.m.
Faculty Library, Vanderbilt Hall, 3rd floor
Although the Colloquium on Legal, Political, and Social Philosophy is on hiatus this year, it will convene a special “pop-up” session on Thursday, October 17 from 4-7 p.m. in the Faculty Library on the third floor of Vanderbilt Hall.
Professor Joseph Raz, who has long been an important member of the Colloquium community, will present a paper on this occasion, which marks the end of many years during which he has taught regularly at Columbia Law School each fall.
The paper is called Normative Powers.
Fall 2018
Professors Jeremy Waldron and Samuel Scheffler
Schedule of Speakers
September 6
Eric Beerbohm, Harvard
Gaslighting Citizens
September 13
Rick Brooks, NYU
Loyalty and What Law Demands: Self Interest, Sole Interest or Best Interest
September 20
Jan-Werner Mueller, Princeton
Individual Militant Democracy
Paper removered at the request of the author.
September 27
Antony Duff, University of Minnesota
Criminal Law and the Constitution of Civil Order
October 4
Veronique Munoz-Darde, UC Berkeley
The Priest, the Liberal and the Harlot: Liberalism and Sexual Desire
October 11
Liam Murphy, NYU
Purely Formal Wrongs
October 18
Michele Moody-Adams, Columbia University
Taking Expression Seriously: Equal Citizenship, Expressive Harm
and Confederate Iconography
October 25
Meir Dan-Cohen, UC Berkeley
On the (Im)morality of the Death Penalty
November 1
Amia Srinivasan, University of Oxford
On Genealogy
Paper removed at the request of the author
November 8
Melissa Schwartzberg, NYU
Sheep May Safely Graze: On the Instrumental Justification of Democracy
November 15
Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago
Other Animals Respecting Complex Forms of Life
November 29
Tom Nagel, NYU
Paper removed at the request of the author.
December 6Nancy Fraser, The New School
Democracy’s Crisis:
On the Political Contradictions of Financialized Capitalism
Fall 2017
Professors Liam Murphy and Samuel Scheffler
The Conference for the Colloquium, September 7 and 8
Funded by the research project grant awarded to the late Ronald Dworkin as part of his 2014 Balzan Prize, the conference celebrates Ronald Dworkin’s work by celebrating the Colloquium in Legal, Political, and Social Philosophy, which he convened with Thomas Nagel from 1987 to 2011, joined in the early years by Lawrence Sager and David Richards.
The conference will comprise four modified colloquium sessions. The papers will be posted on this page two weeks in advance. Each session will last for two hours, and there will be just one interlocutor for the guest speaker in each session. Our four distinguished speakers all presented at the colloquium during the Dworkin/Nagel years. We are happy to have, as a guest interlocutor, our former colleague Lawrence Sager. The first session of the conference will take place in the traditional Thursday afternoon colloquium time slot. All sessions will take place in the traditional colloquium room.
September 7
4:00 – 4:30 Welcome by Dean Trevor Morrison and acknowledgements
4:30 – 6:30 Session One
Thomas M. Scanlon (Harvard)
Contractualism and Justification
Commentator: Samuel Scheffler (NYU)
Chair: Liam Murphy (NYU)
September 8
10:00 – 12:00 Session Two
Frank Michelman (Harvard)
Rawls’s Constitution-Centered Propositions on Legitimacy: A Friendly Interrogation
Commentator: Lawrence Sager (University of Texas, Austin)
Chair: Lewis Kornhauser (NYU)
12:00 – 2:00 Lunch
2:00 – 4:00 Session Three
Seana Shiffrin (UCLA)
Democratic Law
Commentator: Liam Murphy (NYU)
Chair: Jeremy Waldron (NYU)
4:00 – 5:00 Break
5:00 - 7:00 Session Four
Joseph Raz (King’s College London and Columbia)
Can Moral Principles Change?
Commentator: Jeremy Waldron (NYU)
Chair: Samuel Scheffler
September 14
Daniel Viehoff, NYU
Legitimately Arresting the Innocent, and Other Puzzles about Officially
Inflicted Harm
September 28
Grainne de Burca, NYU
Is Supranational Governance a challenge to Liberal Constitutionalism?
October 5
Samuel Freeman, University of Pennsylvania
Individual Freedom and Laissez-Faire Rights and Liberties
October 12
Jerry Gaus, Arizona University
The Complexity of a Diverse Moral Order
October 19
Robert Gooding –Williams, Columbia University
Ideology, Social Practices, Anti-Black Concepts
October 26
Susan Wolf, University of North Carolina
First reading: Aesthetic Responsibility
Second reading: Selves Like Us
November 2nd
Ekow Yankah, Cardozo University
The Sovereign and the Republic: A Republican View of Political Obligation
November 9
David Luban, Georgetown University
Arendt at Jerusalem
November 16
Laura Valentini, London School of Economics
There Are No Natural Rights
November 30
Juliana Bidadanure, Stanford University
Justice Across Ages: Treating Young and Old as Equals
December 7
Debra Satz, Stanford University
Equality and Adequacy as Distributive Ideals for Education
Past papers
Fall 2016
Fall 2015
Fall 2014
Fall 2011
Fall 2010
Fall 2009
Fall 2007
Fall 2006
Fall 2005
Fall 2003
Fall 2002
Fall 2001