Colloquium in Legal and Political Philosophy - Seana Shiffrin (UCLA)
Founded in Fall 2015, the Colloquium is an initiative by the Faculty of Law, the Department of Philosophy, and the Department of Political Studies. It consists of a series of seminars and workshops within the broad ambit of the Colloquium’s mandate. Students registered with the course meet with the Colloquium convenors to discuss a recent paper by a leading scholar. The following week, the students meet with the author, along with other faculty members and invited guests, for a workshop about the paper.
The Colloquium’s aim is to promote closer collaboration between legal, philosophical, and political studies, by bringing together students and faculty from these overlapping disciplines to engage in rigorous intellectual engagement. The Colloquium contributes to the Queen’s Collaborative Program in Political and Legal Thought.
In Fall 2020, the Colloquium convenors are Professor Jean Thomas and Professor Grégoire Webber. The Colloquium is funded by Professor Webber's Canada Research Chair in Public Law and Philosophy of Law.
Further to decision of the University that the Fall 2020 semester be held remotely for the majority of students, all Colloquium sessions listed below will be hosted remotely.
All members of the Queen's community are welcome to attend the workshops and are invited to communicate with the convenors in order to receive information on how to do so.
Monday, November 9, 2020 (3:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.)
Seana Valentine Shiffrin is Professor of Philosophy and Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice at UCLA, where she has taught since 1992. Shiffrin received her B.A. degree from UC Berkeley where she was the University Medalist. She attended Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar and received the B.Phil. with Distinction and the D.Phil. in Philosophy. She earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She teaches courses on moral and political philosophy as well as contracts, freedom of speech, constitutional rights and individual autonomy, remedies and legal theory. She served for sixteen years as an associate editor of Philosophy and Public Affairs and serves as co-director of the UCLA Law and Philosophy Program. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2016, she received the UCLA School of Law's Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Her research addresses issues in moral, political and legal philosophy, as well as matters of legal doctrine, that concern equality, autonomy, and the social conditions for their realization. She has written extensively on the morality of promising and the role of law in facilitating and fostering moral character, with a special emphasis on the connection between contracts and promises. Her recent book, Speech Matters, explored the ethics of communication and the connection between the prohibition on lying, freedom of speech, and moral progress.