Previous events
2025
'Life-making vs. Capital. Social Reproduction and Oppression’
Dr Mirjam Mueller (Glasgow School of Law)
27 November 2025
2024
'Kant and the Supposed Right of Necessity'
Jens Timmermann (University of St Andrews)
18 October 2024
Abstract: For Kant, it can never be right to take an innocent life. This includes traditional cases of necessity, i.e. cases in which we would need to take the life of another to preserve our own. The standard example is that of the ‘plank of Carneades’, which can be found in Cicero’s De officiis. When shipwrecked on the high seas, is it permissible to wrest a plank from the hands of someone who has already seized it? Kant’s answer in the introduction to the Doctrine of Right is negative. Surprisingly, however, he also tells us that this kind of wrong would not be punishable in a court of law. In this talk, I examine Kant’s argument and its implications within in their historical, philosophical and legal context.
'The Metaphysics of Legal Facts'
Samuele Chilovi
24 June 2024
Room 207, No. 10 Professors’ Square
2.30-3.00: Introduction: Sam Chilovi (Madrid)
3.00-3.20: Comment: Stephan Leuenberger (Glasgow)
3.20-3.40: Comment: George Pavlakos (Glasgow)
3.40-3.50: Break
3.50-5.00: General Discussion
Freedom and Futurity: Beauvoir’s Moral Psychology
Daniela Dover (Oxford) and Jonathan Gingerich (Rutgers)
3 May 2024
Abstract: This paper begins by introducing Beauvoirian moral psychology through its key concepts: ambiguity, project, situation, anxiety, justification, natural freedom, and moral freedom. It goes on to show how Beauvoir derives substantive ethical conclusions from her portrait of the human psyche. In its most general form, the Beauvoirian ‘existential imperative’ holds that, on pain of unmitigated anxiety, each human being must will freedom absolutely—‘the man who seeks to justify his life must will freedom itself, first of all and absolutely’ (Beauvoir, Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté [Gallimard 1947], 34-35). Echoing Kant, whose categorical imperative can be stated in three ways that are ultimately, but not obviously, equivalent, we distinguish among what we call three ‘formulations’ of this imperative, each of which corresponds to a step in Beauvoir’s overall argument. Beauvoir begins by arguing that each of us must will our own freedom. Next, she argues that each of us must will the freedom of at least some others. Finally, she holds that each of us must will the freedom of all. This in turn requires political action.
2023
'Causation and Fault in Apportionment of Liability'
Alex Kaiserman (University of Oxford)
Work-in-progress Seminar in Law and Metaphysics
30 January 2023
1:15pm- 2:30pm, Alex Houghton, The Truth Requirement for Legal Practical Reasoning [PRE-READ]
2:45pm- 4:00pm, George Pavlakos, The Kantian Legal Relation as Radical Non-positivism [PRE-READ with intro by author]
4:00pm-4:15pm coffee break (coffee from University Student Union)
4:15pm-5:30pm, Stephan Leuenberger, Eliminativist moral impact theory [Presentation}.
'Prosecutorial Discretion and Rights in Criminal Law'
Dr Aness Webster (Durham)
20 January 2023
2022
"Legal Obligation, Criminal Wrongdoing, and Necessity"
Dr Marie Newhouse (University of Surrey)
18 November 2022
'Habitual Ethics'
Professor Sylvie Delacroix (Birmingham Law School)
22 April 2022
Abstract: For many, ‘habitual ethics’ is a contradiction in terms. On this view, it is precisely because we are capable of distancing ourselves from the habitual that we are in a position to address the ethical question: ‘how should I/we live?’. I shall argue that there can be such a thing as habitual ethics and that it is high time we paid attention to the conditions under which the pre-reflective intelligence that makes us capable of ethical agency becomes compromised.
This event is generously supported by the Glasgow Legal Theory, Hart Publishing, and Jurisprudence. An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought. Sponsored by:
'Against the Ontology-First Approach to Gender Recognition'
Dr Katharine Jenkins (Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Glasgow)
4 February 2022
Abstract: This is the final chapter of a book manuscript (Ontology and Oppression: Race, Gender, and Social Reality). In it, I consider some current public discussions about gender recognition, understood as the ways in which people’s genders should be socially recognised, for example in terms of how people should be able to navigate gendered social spaces. I examine one of the many dysfunctions that currently characterise many of these discussions, which is an assumption about the relationship between ontology and social practices. Roughly, the assumption holds that settling the ontology of gender will automatically determine what shape our gendered social practices ought to take; I call this assumption ‘The Ontology First Approach’. I will argue that we should reject the Ontology First Approach, and I will show how doing so opens up more fruitful ways of thinking about gender recognition. These ways involve treating many of the issues that are in question as being based on the practical consequences of different possible ways of organising our social practices, rather than on facts about the ontology of social kinds. I argue that adopting this approach makes many questions about gender recognition much easier to resolve.
This event is generously supported by the Glasgow Legal Theory, Hart Publishing, and Jurisprudence. An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought.
2020
'Nonbasic Epistemology'
Mark Greenberg (UCLA), with a short introduction by Sam Chilovi (Pompeu Fabra University)
9 December 2020
'Statistics, Epistemic Gaps, and Legal Risk'
Lewis Ross (LSE)
31 January 2020
Project Workshop on 'Grounding in Law' (RSE Workshop Grant)
13 February 2020
Further details can be found here
Friday 6 March – Saturday 7th March 2020 - Project Workshop on "Grounding in Law"
(Royal Society of Edinburgh Workshop Grant)
Venue: room 207, The Square 10, University of Glasgow (map link here).
More information here.
Cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictive measures: Friday 24 April 2020, 2-4 pm: Sylvie Delacroix (Birmingham)
Venue: Melville Room (Main Building, University of Glasgow)
2019
Wednesday 11 December – Public Roundtable Discussion: Blame, Apology, and Forgiveness
Organisers: Christoph Kelp and Mona Simion
Venue and Time: Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, Lecture Theatre K3.25, John Anderson Building, University of Strathclyde, Rottenrow East, Glasgow; 7:30 pm.
Speakers: Miranda Fricker (CUNY), Elinar Mason (Edinburgh), Glen Pettigrove (Glasgow).
Funder: Royal Society of Edinburgh, The Blame and Responsibility Project, PI Jessica Brown
More information here.
Wednesday 12 June – Thursday 13 June - 1st Project Workshop on "Grounding in Law" (Royal Society of Edinburgh Workshop Grant)
Venue: Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona)
More information here.
2018
Friday 5 October – Invited Speaker: Hrafn Asgeirsson (University of Surrey), “Authority, Communication, and Legal Content”
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Lady Cosgrove Room
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Friday 12 October – Invited Speaker: Eliot Michaelson (King’s College London), “Confused Consent”
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Room 207
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Friday 23 November – Invited Speaker: John Horden (Universitat de Barcelona) and Dan López de Sa (ICREA & Universitat de Barcelona), "Groups: The Plural Identity Thesis"
Venue: Lady Cosgrove Room, School of Law
Time: 13.00-15.00
Friday 30 November – Invited Speaker: Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco (University of Surrey), “‘Seeing an aspect’ and Understanding Action”
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Lady Cosgrove Room
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Friday 9 February – Kelsen, Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory (1934)
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Lady Cosgrove Room
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Friday 23 March – John Woods, “Relevance in the Law: A Logical Perspective” (2008)
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Lady Cosgrove Room
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Friday 13 April – Invited Speaker: Prof. Luis Duarte, “What Is It to Apply the Law?”
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Room 207
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Friday 11 May – Invited Speaker: Samuele Chilovi, “Is Hume’s Law a Threat to Positivism and Naturalism?”
2017
Friday 13 October – Carlos Alchourrón, “The Intuitive Background of Normative Legal Discourse and Its Formalisation” (1972).
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Room 227
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Friday 27 October – W. N. Hohfeld, “Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning” (1917).
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Room 207
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Friday 24 November – Invited Speaker: Prof. David Plunkett, “Real Definition, General Jurisprudence, and The Planning Theory of Law: A Reply to Hershovitz on the “Model of Plans””.
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Room 227
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Friday 1 December - Adam Bugeja, “Forgetting your scruples” (2016).
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Room 207
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Friday 24 February – Selim Berker, “The Unity of Grounding” (2015); and Mark Greenberg, “How Facts Make Law” (2004).
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Room 207
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Friday 24 March – Joseph Raz, “Reasons: Explanatory and Normative” (2007).
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Room 207
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Friday 21 April – Tom Dougherty, “Yes Means Yes: Consent as Communication” (2015).
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Room 207
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Friday 5 May – David Plunkett and Scott Shapiro, “Law, Morality, and Everything Else: General Jurisprudence as a Branch of Metanormative Theory” (forthcoming).
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Room 207
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Wednesday 31 May – Invited Speaker: Prof. David Plunkett (Darmouth College), “Robust Normativity, Morality, and Legal Positivism”.
Venue: The Stair Building, 7 The Square, Room 207
Time: 13.00 – 15.00
Thursday 10 August – Friday 11 August - Workshop: Law and the Whole Truth
Venue: Reid Room, 69 Oakfield Avenue
More information here