Fall 2021

This course is a workshop for discussing work-in-progress in moral, political, and legal theory. The central aim is to enable students to engage directly with legal scholars, philosophers, and political theorists working on important normative questions. Another aim is to bring together scholars from different disciplines and perspectives, such as economics, history, sociology, and political science, who have normative interests.

The theme for the Fall 2021 workshop is Rawls’s A Theory of Justice fifty years on.

The format of the course is as follows: for the sessions with guest presenters, a designated student commentator will lead off with a 15-minute comment on the paper. The presenter will have 5-10 minutes to respond and then we will open up the discussion to the group. The first part of the course will be open to non-enrolled students, faculty, and visitors who wish to participate in the workshop discussion. We’ll stop for a break at 2:00 and those not enrolled in the course will leave. Enrolled students will continue the discussion with the guest until 3:00.

This is a cross-listed/room-shared course with the Philosophy and Political Science Departments. Students may enroll through Law (Law 210.2), Philosophy (Philosophy 290-09), or Political Science (PS 211). The first class will be on Friday, August 20th - 12PM-3PM, and the final class meeting is November 19th .

This semester the workshop is co-taught by Joshua Cohen and Veronique Munoz-Darde

20^th August            –          Introduction – no speaker     

27^th August            –          Lara Buchak, Princeton

3rd September       –          Thomas Piketty, EHESS & the Paris School of Economics

10^th September       –          Samuel Scheffler, NYU         

17^th September       –          Samuel Freeman, University of Pennsylvania

24^th September       –          Sarah Song, UC Berkeley

1^st October            –          Tommie Shelby, Harvard

8^th October            –          Seana Shiffrin, UCLA

15^th October          –          T. M. Scanlon, Harvard

22^nd October          –          Arthur Ripstein, University of Toronto

29^th October          –          Teresa Bejan, Oxford

5^th November        –          Erin Kelly, Tufts

12^th November       –          Josh Cohen, UC Berkeley

19^th November      –          Kenzie Bok, Harvard

This course covers design and design-based inference for both surveys and randomized
experiments. In covering the two domains, the course emphasizes the important and
underappreciated relationship between design and analysis. The lectures go back and
forth between discussing tools for surveys and experiments to highlight connections.
Problem sets will emphasize both application and theory. A final project will require
students to apply methods learned in this class to design a study or evaluate an analytic
method.

In this course we will explore questions about citizenship and immigration in the contemporary world. Readings will be drawn from scholarship in political theory, law, and the social sciences with the goal of integrating insights from these different fields in new, thought-provoking ways. 

The first half of the course will focus on citizenship. How should we conceive of citizenship? As a formal legal status, an entitlement to a set of rights, active participation in self-governance, an identity, or something else? What is the relationship between citizenship, on the one hand, and race, class, gender, sexuality, and national origin, on the other? Which rights have historically been attached to citizenship status and which rights have been extended to noncitizens? What would cosmopolitan citizenship look like?

The second half of the course will focus on immigration. Why do people migrate across international borders? Should people be allowed to migrate across borders? States exert control over migration but what, if anything, justifies this control? What is the impact of migration on sending countries, receiving countries, and migrants themselves? What are the key dynamics in the politics of immigration and how do they constrain immigration policymaking? What are the current immigration categories and priorities in U.S. immigration law? What kinds of immigration policies should the U.S. and other liberal democratic countries pursue? 

The course is cross-listed with the Law School. Restricted to Graduate student enrollment only.

This seminar offers an overview of the history of moral philosophy, paying special attention to arguments about the relationship of morality to law, as well as the connections between moral philosophy and political economy. We will begin by studying canonical texts before turning to more contemporary work. Authors will include Aristotle, Cicero, Pufendorf, Hume, Smith, Bentham, Kant, Mill, Edgeworth, Pareto, Sen, Williams, Anderson, Rorty, and others.

The course begins August 17th and is combined with Law.