UCL Jurisprudence Group

Description

Legal Philosophy or Jurisprudence – broadly understood as the philosophical inquiry into the nature of law and the values it should serve – has a long and distinguished tradition at UCL Laws.

The jurisprudential tradition at UCL continues to flourish. A large number of faculty members conduct research in jurisprudence and related areas of legal theory and philosophy.

Members are united not by adherence to any common set of jurisprudential doctrines, but by a joint commitment to the use of clear and rigorous philosophical argumentation to probe some of the deepest problems of law and society.

A shared focus, in keeping with the Benthamite ideals of the founders of UCL, is the aim of relating law to fundamental ethical values in order to achieve an enhanced appreciation of how law can be a force for good in the lives of individuals and societies. . The Faculty hosts the annual Quain Lectures in Jurisprudence, which are given by a leading figure in legal or political philosophy and are published by Oxford University Press.

Together with scholars from Philosophy and Politics, the Faculty of Laws co-ordinates the running of a Colloquium in Law, Politics and Philosophy which takes place in Terms 2 and 3 of the academic year.

As part of an on-going collaboration with Yale Law School the Group co-hosts the UCL-Yale Legal Philosophy Workshop in Term 3. The Faculty has collaborated with Yale on a number of other projects in legal and political philosophy, including workshops and symposia on the nature of law, the philosophy of private law, and the ethics of markets and economic inequality.

The UCL Legal Philosophy Forum is a more informal discussion group for work-in-progress in legal philosophy, which is run by UCL research students. In addition to such ongoing activities, the Faculty has organised major international conferences on philosophical themes including the philosophical foundations of aspects of private and public law.

Research by Faculty members addresses a diverse, and continually changing, array of topics. This includes questions concerning the general nature of law and legal adjudication, and questions about the conceptual and normative underpinnings of particular areas of law, including seeing law through the lens of gender and race theory, as well as those in particular areas of law such as constitutional theory, the philosophy of international law, human rights and labour law, medical law and ethics, and the ethics of markets and the philosophy of criminal law and contract law.

There is also a strong focus on the history of legal philosophy, exemplified primarily by the world-famous Bentham Project which was established in 1959 and is based in the Faculty. The mission of the Bentham Project is to produce the new authoritative edition of the Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham.

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University College London (UCL)
London

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