The Nature of Law: Contemporary Perspectives

A call for Commentators and Notice of McMaster Univesity’s upcoming conference:

The Nature of Law: Contemporary Perspectives

May 13-15th, 2011
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

McMaster University’s Philosophy Department is pleased to invite philosophers and legal scholars to attend and to comment upon the main-program papers of our conference, The Nature of Law: Contemporary Perspectives. If you would like the opportunity to offer your critical expertise within this event, please attend to the information below. Or, if you are just interested attending this international forum for legal theory, please see our webiste at: tnl.mcmaster.ca

Information for Commentators:

Theoretical Background Request: To best match our program-papers with our commentators, please provide us with:
1) A short (100 words max.) expression of interest, pertaining to which paper you would like to comment upon, and why.
2) Your (short or long) CV, in Word format.

Contact Information:
1) Please send this information to: tnl@mcmaster.ca
2) Please use “CFC Reply” as the subject line of your correspondence.

Deadline: We will begin rolling acceptances for commentators on March 25th, 2011, in order to give us time to find the best matches.

Session Format:
Main papers will be approximately 30 minutes long. And, your commentary will be expected to last 10-15 minutes (maximum).

Conference Content:
The Nature of Law: Contemporary Perspectives includes work from a diverse and reknowned group of scholars, including six keynote sessions. The opportunity for commentary is restricted to the main-program papers, listed below:

Keynote Speakers:

Julie Dickson
Mike Giudice
Matthew Kramer
Brian Leiter
Margaret Martin
Mark Murphy
Scott Shapiro

Main-Program Presenters:

Brian Bix (University of Minnesota School of Law) “The Radbruch Formula”

Tom Campbell (Australia National University College of Law) “Explanation and Prescription in Applied Legal Philosophy”

Jonathan Crowe (T. C. Beirne School of Law) “Four Routes to the Dependence Thesis”

Andrea Dolcetti (Oxford) and Giovanni Ratti (University of Girona) “Legal Disagreements and the Dual Nature of Law”

Kenneth Ehrenberg (SUNY- Buffalo) “Three Arguments Against the Razian Notion that Law Claims to Exclude”

Imer Flores (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) “The Problem of the Nature of Law and of Legal Rationality Revisited”

Ken Himma (Seattle Pacific University) “Hart and Austin Together Again for the First Time”

Barry Hoffmaster (University of Western Ontario Dept of Philosophy) “The Rationality of Judging and Judges”

Allan Hutchinson (Osgoode Hall Law School) “Law's Natures”

Katherine Kim (Wayne State University) “Acceptability, Impartiality, and Peremptory Norms of General International Law”

Sari Kisilevskey (Queens College, CUNY) “Easy Cases And Social Sources: Towards a New Defence of Legal Positivism”

Barbara Levenbrook (North Carolina State University) “How to Hold the Social Fact Thesis—a Reply to Greenberg and Toh”

David Plunkett (UCLA School of Law) “Legal Positivism and Judicial Interpretative Practice”

Dan Priel (Osgoode Hall School of Law) “The Significance of Politics to Debates about the Nature of Law”

Anthony Reeves (Binghamton University) “The Authority of Law in Nascent Legal Systems: The Moral Claims of International Law”

Arie Rosen (New York University) “The Normative Fallacy Regarding Authority”

Fred Schauer (University of Virginia) “On the Nature of the Nature of Law”

Roger Shiner (University of Alberta) “Neuro-Science and the Nature of Law”

Natalie Stoljar (McGill), “Three Concepts of Law”

Noel Struchiner (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro) “No Empathy Towards Empathy”


For the full schedule of conference events, see:
http://tnl.mcmaster.ca/conference/program.html

For general conference information, see:
tnl.mcmaster.ca