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Class Information
- Office
hours: Wednesdays, 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. My office is McDonough 542.
- Email:
lsolum@gmail.com
- Phone:
202.662.4044
- Class
Meets on Wednesdays in McDonough 588 from 1:20 p.m. to 3:20 p.m.
- Readings: All readings will be provided in
electronic form on the class website.
There is no assigned text for purchase.
- Course
Description:
This
seminar will investigate normative theory in the context of law. It will begin with a brief foundatonal questions about the relationship of
normative theories to the law, including the debate between legal formalists
and legal instrumentalists as well as the historical debate between legal posivists and natural lawyers. It will then turn to the three most
important families or clusters of normative legal theory: (1) areataic theories, from their classical expression in
Aristotle’s moral and political philosophy to contemporary virtue ethics
and virtue jurisprudence; (2) deontological theories, ranging from Kant’s
moral philosphy to contractarian
in both its classical Lockean and contemporary Rawlsian forms; and (3) consequentialist
theories, ranging from Bentham’s utilitarianism to contemporary normative
law and economics. The course will
end with an investigation of the metaethical and metajurisprudential issues that play important roles in
contemporary debates in normative legal theory. The aim of the seminar will be to equip
participants to make and evaluate sophisticated normative arguments in
legal practice and theory.
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