Seana Shiffrin

Last updated
Seana Shiffrin
Born
Seana Valentine Shiffrin
Institutions UC Berkeley, UCLA, Harvard Law School, Oxford University
Doctoral advisor G. A. Cohen
Main interests
Legal philosophy, moral philosophy, political philosophy

Seana Valentine Shiffrin is Professor of Philosophy and Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice at the University of California, Los Angeles. [1] Shiffrin's work spans 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 is an associate editor of Philosophy and Public Affairs [1] and was elected a Fellow of the American Academic of Arts and Sciences in 2010. [2]

Contents

Education and career

Shiffrin received her B.A. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988, winning the University Medal. As a Marshall Scholar, she went on to obtain a B.Phil., with distinction, from University College, Oxford, in 1990. She earned a Ph.D. at Oxford University in 1993 under the supervision of G. A. Cohen, and then a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1996. [1]

She is winner of the Fred Berger Memorial Prize in Philosophy of Law in 2002 for her widely cited article, "Paternalism, Unconscionability, and Accommodation". [3] She was also the Hempel Lecturer at Princeton University in 2012. [4]

Philosophical work

Shiffrin's recent work has primarily focused on freedom of speech, truth-telling, promising, and the place of the law in building moral character. [1]

Shiffrin argues that although liberalism may preclude legal enforcement of morality for its own sake, the law cannot be indifferent to morality but must promote the social conditions of fostering and sustaining moral agency and moral deliberation. [5] A connected theme she emphasizes is the role of equality and equal social relationships in rendering individual autonomy possible and meaningful. [6] She has pursued these themes predominately through her non-conventionalist account of promising, her controversial argument that contract law should be more sensitive to its relationship to the moral practice of promising, her critique of luck-egalitarian conceptions of egalitarianism as incompatible with liberal freedoms that require accommodation practices, and also through the development of her thinker-based theory of freedom of speech. She is also cited for her critique of Lockean arguments for intellectual property, for her efforts to develop a non-comparative alternative theory of harm, and for her argument that the federal law authorizing exploitative penalty fees for minor breaches of credit card contracts violates constitutional due process guarantees against disproportionate punitive damages. [7]

Her first book, Speech Matters: On Morality, Lying and the Law, appeared in 2014 from Princeton University Press. [8]

Selected works

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philosophy of law</span> Branch of philosophy examining the nature of law

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Distributive justice</span> Concept relating to distribution of rewards to group members

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The non-aggression principle (NAP), also called the non-aggression axiom, is a concept in which aggression, defined as initiating or threatening any forceful interference against either an individual, their property or against promises (contracts) for which the aggressor is liable and in which the individual is a counterparty, is inherently wrong. There is no single or universal interpretation or definition of the NAP, with different definitions varying in regards to how to treat intellectual property, force, abortion, and other topics.

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Drucilla Cornell, was an American philosopher and feminist theorist, whose work has been influential in political and legal philosophy, ethics, deconstruction, critical theory, and feminism. Cornell was an emerita Professor of Political Science, Comparative Literature and Women's & Gender Studies at Rutgers University the State University of New Jersey; Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Pretoria, South Africa; and a visiting professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. She also taught for many years on the law faculties of the University of Pennsylvania and of Cardozo Law School of Yeshiva University.

Matthew Henry Kramer is an American philosopher, currently Professor of Legal and Political Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He writes mainly in the areas of metaethics, normative ethics, legal philosophy, and political philosophy. He is a leading proponent of legal positivism. He has been Director of the Cambridge Forum for Legal and Political Philosophy since 2000. He has been teaching at Cambridge University and at Churchill College since 1994.

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Gerald Allan Cohen, was a Canadian political philosopher who held the positions of Quain Professor of Jurisprudence, University College London and Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, All Souls College, Oxford. He was known for his work on Marxism, and later, egalitarianism and distributive justice in normative political philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social equality</span> Comparable status amongst peoples with regard to certain respects

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Herman</span>

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Biography". UCLA. Retrieved 29 July 2013.
  2. "Newsroom".
  3. Little, Phillip (4 January 2007). "UCLA Professor Mark Greenberg Wins the Fred Berger Memorial Prize for Best Paper on the Philosophy of Law". UCLA Newsroom. Retrieved 29 July 2013.
  4. "Department of Philosophy Events Spring 2012". Princeton. Archived from the original on 29 July 2013. Retrieved 29 July 2013.
  5. Shiffrin, Seana (January 2007). "The Divergence of Contract and Promise" (PDF). Harvard Law Review. 120. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 August 2010. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  6. Shiffrin, Seana (2003). "Race, labor, and the fair equality of opportunity principle" (PDF). Fordham Law Review.[ permanent dead link ]
  7. Fisher, William (2001). "Theories of intellectual property" (PDF). New Essays in the Legal and Political Theory of Property. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  8. Shiffrin, Seana Valentine (28 December 2014). Speech Matters. ISBN   9780691157023.