Stephen Breyer is Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. This talk was recorded at an informal lunchtime gathering with University of Chicago Law School students on February 8, 2006.

Justice Stephen Breyer: "A Day In the Life of a Supreme Court Justice"

Richard Rorty (1931-2007) was Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Philosophy at Stanford University. This talk was recorded April 10, 2006 as the annual Dewey Lecture in Law and Philosophy.

Richard Rorty: "Dewey and Posner on Pragmatism and Moral Progress"

David Currie, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Law School, passed away on October 15, 2007. In honor of his life and work, we present this unique recording of his reading of the United States Constitution. The recording was made on April 26 and May 5, 2006 at the studios of WHPK at the University of Chicago and post-production was done at the Digital Media Lab at the University of Chicago in May of 2006. The studio engineer was Patrick Reisinger and the post-production engineer was Luis-Manuel Garcia.

David Currie Reads the U.S. Constitution

This recording of University of Chicago Professor of Economics Milton Friedman was recorded on October 15, 1978 by James H. Fox, JD '78.

The speech was originally scheduled for the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation, but was moved to the University of Chicago Law School Auditorium upon the announcement the week before of his Nobel Prize in Economics .

In the talk, Professor Friedman begins with two seemingly contradictory propositions (namely, "There are few peoples, if any in the world, who owe so great a debt to free enterprise and competitive capitalism as the Jews," and "There are few peoples, if any in the world, who have done so much to undermine the intellectual foundations of capitalism as the Jews.") and then attempts to reconcile them.

Milton Friedman, "Capitalism and the Jews"

Personalized Law

Presented by Omri Ben-Shahar, Professor of Law, the Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law, Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics

Omri Ben-Shahar spoke about his recent co-authored book, Personalized Law. The book presents a vision of a brave new world, where each person is bound by their own personally tailored law. “Reasonable person” standards would be replaced by a multitude of personalized commands, each individual with their own “reasonable you” rule. Skilled doctors would be held to higher standards of care, the most vulnerable consumers and employees would receive stronger protections, age restrictions for driving or for the consumption of alcohol would vary according to the recklessness risk that each person poses, and borrowers would be entitled to personalized loan disclosures tailored to their unique needs and delivered in a format fitting their mental capacity. Should we welcome this transformation of the law? Does personalized law harbor a utopic promise, or would it produce alienation, demoralization, and discrimination? The lecture asks how personalized law can be designed to deliver precision and justice and what pitfalls the regime would have to prudently avoid.

This event was recorded on June 8, 2022.

2022 Emeritus Luncheon

Recorded on February 7, 2014, at the University of Chicago Law School, this session featured author Scott Turow as Plenary Speaker and Law School faculty Alison LaCroix, Judge Diane Wood, and Richard McAdams.

Crime in Law and Literature Conference Plenary Talk and Panel, featuring Scott Turow

On April 3, 2012, the Law School hosted a timely discussion with Sam Zell, one of the world’s leading investors, on "The Economy, Law and Entrepreneurialism." Zell, whose investment interests span real estate, energy, logistics, transportation, media, and health care, was joined in conversation with Dean Michael Schill.

Zell is one of the most insightful analysts of economic trends, whose successful investment strategy has made him a perennial member of Forbes billionaire list. Zell founded Equity Group Investments (EGI), the private entrepreneurial investment firm, more than 40 years ago. EGI created one of the largest real estate investment trusts (REITs) in history. He also is chairman and co-founder of Equity International. EI has invested in 22 portfolio companies, including homebuilding, retail, warehousing, distribution, office, hospitality, self-storage, senior living and specialty finance sectors spanning Latin America, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Europe.

Previously, Mr. Zell served as chairman for Equity Office Properties Trust (EOP), the largest office REIT in the U.S. EOP was sold in February 2007 to The Blackstone Group for $39 billion in the largest private equity transaction in history at the time.

Among Zell’s investment “fundamentals” are these maxims: “When everyone is going right, look left.” “Look for good companies with bad balance sheets.” “Liquidity=Value.” “Understand the downside.” Mr. Zell serves on the JPMorgan National Advisory Board; the Eurohypo International Advisory Board; the President’s Advisory Board at the University of Michigan; the Visitor’s Committee at the University of Michigan Law School; and with the combined efforts of the University of Michigan Business School, he established the Zell/Lurie Entrepreneurial Center. Mr. Zell’s continual assistance to Michigan’s MBA program has also enhanced the Business School’s Polish Studies Program. He was appointed a DeRoy Visiting Professor in Honors at the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan. He is a long-standing supporter of the University of Pennsylvania Wharton Real Estate Center, and has endowed the Samuel Zell/Robert Lurie Real Estate Center at Wharton. Mr. Zell has also endowed the Northwestern University Center for Risk Management.

A native Chicagoan, Mr. Zell is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Michigan Law School. He began his career in real estate as an undergraduate at the University by managing apartment buildings throughout Southeast Michigan.

Economy, Law, and Entrepreneurialism: A Conversation with Sam Zell

A panel of leading scholars discuss Douglas Baird's pathbreaking work on Contract Law published in his new book Reconstructing Contracts.

Avery Katz, Vice Dean and Milton Handler Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Stewart Macaulay, Malcolm Pitman Sharp Professor & Theodore W. Brazeau Professor, University of Wisconsin Madison Law School
Ariel Porat, The Alain Poher Chair in Private Law, Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University
Moderated by Omri Ben-Shahar, Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law and Economics and Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics, University of Chicago Law School.

This panel was recorded on October 23, 2013.

Panel on "Reconstructing Contracts: The Contracts Scholarship of Douglas Baird"

Professor Todd Henderson leads an engaging discussion with Yammer Founder and CEO, David Sacks. 

David has been involved in the Internet space more than 10 years as an entrepreneur, executive and investor, starting with PayPal in 1999. He was PayPal's chief operating officer and product leader, taking the company from startup to IPO and eventual sale to eBay for $1.5 billion. Subsequently, he founded Geni.com, a genealogy website that enables millions of family members to collaboratively build an online family tree. Geni was acquired by MyHeritage in 2012. He also produced and financed the movie "Thank You For Smoking." Also in 2012, David sold Yammer to Microsoft for $1.2 billion.
David holds a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.

This talk was recorded on May 2, 2014.

A Fireside Chat with David Sacks '98, Founder and CEO of Yammer

Richard A. Posner, Senior Lecturer in Law and a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, devoted a lunchtime keynote to discussing how judges might receive and view empirical research.

Richard A. Posner is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Following his graduation from Harvard Law School, Judge Posner clerked for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. From 1963 to 1965, he was assistant to Commissioner Philip Elman of the Federal Trade Commission. For the next two years, he was assistant to the solicitor general of the United States. Prior to going to Stanford Law School in 1968 as Associate Professor, Judge Posner served as general counsel of the President's Task Force on Communications Policy. He first came to the University of Chicago Law School in 1969, and was Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law prior to his appointment in 1981 as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He was the chief judge of the court from 1993 to 2000.

This talk was recorded on October 23, 2014.

Richard Posner, Empirical Legal Studies Conference keynote

Even for those among us who are not altogether convinced by Isaiah Berlin's famous essay "Two Concepts of Liberty," it has by now become commonplace to adopt a distinction between "negative" and "positive" liberties that largely coincides with the one he offered. In my lecture I defend the thesis that this bifurcation of the concept of freedom is incomplete in a significant respect, because it omits a third type, which I will call "social freedom." I proceed first by illustrating with some well-known examples how we must understand this third form of freedom, which cannot be performed by one subject alone, but rather requires the cooperation of others. In the second step I want to recall briefly the philosophical tradition in which this idea of "social freedom" has always had a central place. Finally, I delve into the systematic question of whether the suggested model of freedom in fact designates a third concept, which does not conform to the traditional bifurcated understanding.

Axel Honneth is a professor of philosophy at the University of Frankfurt and Columbia University, and the director of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt.

This talk, the Dewey Lecture in Law and Philosophy, was recorded on November 12, 2014.

Axel Honneth, “Three, Not Two, Concepts of Liberty”

Human Dignity has become a central value in political and constitutional thought. Yet its meaning and scope, and its relation to other moral and political values such as autonomy and rights have been elusive. The lecture will explicate the value of Human Dignity through the exploration of three distinct ways in which dignity is violated.

Moshe Halbertal is the Gruss Professor of Law at NYU and Professor of Philosophy Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

The 2015 Dewey Lecture was recorded on November 11 at the University of Chicago Law School.

Moshe Halbertal, "Three Concepts of Human Dignity"

Justin Driver is Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law and Herbert and Marjorie Fried Research Scholar. His principal research interests include constitutional law, constitutional theory, and the intersection of race with legal institutions. Prior to joining the University of Chicago Law School faculty, Driver was a visiting professor at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Virginia. He began his career in legal academia at the University of Texas in 2009.

This Loop Luncheon was presented on April 29, 2016, as part of reunion weekend.

Justin Driver, "The Southern Manifesto in Myth and Memory"

One of the great Chicago Ideas is the equivalence of positive and negative incentives. The government can motivate you by rewarding some behavior or by penalizing your failure to behave in the preferred manner. Private parties rarely have the authority to hit you with sticks, so they must usually begin with carrots, or positive inducements, unless law offers torts or other negative inducements in the background. But things quickly get more complicated. Rewards might draw people to an activity, and penalties might cause them to stay away, so that the carrots and sticks are not equivalent. How does law reflect these secondary effects? When is it a good idea to mix positive and negative rewards? Should we pay people not to commit crimes? Why didn’t any lawmakers try to pay people not to enter into same-sex marriages? Why not just impose higher taxes on people who do not engage in public service? This first lecture of the year in our Chicago’s Best Ideas series introduces some of these ideas and then takes them in surprising directions.

Saul Levmore is the William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of Law.

Saul Levmore, "Carrots and Sticks in Law (and Life)"

The choice between rules and standards in lawmaking is a central question. But the line between the two forms is not as clear as most scholars presume. This talk argues that the lack of a coherent  unifying principle in the rules-and-standards distinction is becoming more evident as technologies behind lawmaking evolve. It will explore the leading accounts of rules and standards, the insights they have provided into the process and meaning of law, and why the distinction may be reaching the end of its useful life. The talk will conclude with thoughts on how we should think about forms of law going forward.

This lecture is in honor of Ronald Coase. Coase, who spent most of his academic career at the University of Chicago Law School, helped create the field of law and economics through groundbreaking scholarship that earned him the 1991 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and through his far-reaching influence as a journal editor.

Anthony J. Casey is Professor of Law and Mark Claster Mamolen Teaching Scholar. This Coase Lecture was presented on February 21, 2017.

Anthony J. Casey, "The Short Happy Life of Rules and Standards"

Gillian Thomas, staff attorney at the ACLU Women's Rights Project, will discuss issues in her recently-published book, Because of Sex: One Law, Ten Cases, and Fifty Years about Title VII and its effects for women in the workplace. The book details ten important Supreme Court cases for women's equality, and spends as much time on the personal details as the legal ones for an extremely compelling read. As Title VII is one of the most important safeguards for women and helps ensure gender diversity in the workplace, we believe it will be a valuable addition to the Law School's Diversity Month.

Presented on January 25, 2017, by If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, Labor and Employment Law Society, Public Interest Law Society, Employment Law Clinic, and Law Women's Caucus.

Gillian Thomas, "Title VII and Women in the Workplace"

Featuring Professors Nancy Chi Cantalupo, Katharine Baker, Daniel Hemel, and Richard Epstein. Moderated by Professor Emily Buss. Presented by the Domestic and Sexual Violence Project, Defenders, Law Women's Caucus, Education and Child Advocacy Society, and UChicago Assault Awareness and Prevention Committee, and funded in part by Student Government.

To POE or Not to POE: The Proper Evidentiary Standard for Campus Sexual Misconduct (A Debate)

With commentary from Professor Tom Ginsburg

Professor Eugene Kontorovich teaches at Northwestern University School of Law. He is one of the world’s preeminent experts on universal jurisdiction and maritime piracy, as well as international law and the Israel-Arab conflict. He is the co-editor of the newly-published book, Economics Analysis of International Law (Edward Elgar 2016), a frequent op-ed contributor, and a regular contributor to the Washington Post’s Volokh Conspiracy legal blog. Prof. Kontorovich has testified before Congress, and spoken to the European Parliament and Israeli Knesset, and served as a consultant for the U.S. Defense Department.  Prof. Kontorovich also plays a leading role in the drafting of U.S. state laws dealing with Israel boycotts. He is a recipient of the Federalist Society’s prestigious Bator Award, given annually to a young scholar (under 40), for outstanding scholarship and teaching. He attended the University of Chicago for college and law school, and has taught here. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. 

Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of International Law, Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar, Professor of Political Science. He holds BA, JD, and PhD degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. His books include Judicial Review in New Democracies (2003), which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award from the American Political Science Association; The Endurance of National Constitutions (2009), which also won a best book prize from APSA; Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes (2014); and Judicial Reputation (2015). He currently co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, an effort funded by the National Science Foundation to gather and analyze the constitutions of all independent nation-states since 1789. Before entering law teaching, he served as a legal adviser at the Iran-US Claims Tribunal, The Hague, Netherlands, and he continues to work with numerous international development agencies and foreign governments on legal and constitutional reform.

Presented by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Federalist Society on October 30, 2017.

Eugene Kontorovich, "Disputing Occupation: Israel's Borders in International Law"

Interpreting the language of contracts is the most common and least satisfactory task courts perform in contract disputes. In this Chicago’s Best Ideas lecture Professor Strahilevitz proposes to take much of this task out of the hands of lawyers and judges, entrusting it instead to the public. Strahilevitz’s research (written jointly with Professor Ben-Shahar) develops and tests a novel regime — the “survey interpretation method” — in which interpretation disputes are resolved though large surveys of representative respondents, by choosing the meaning that a majority supports. This method has rich potential to examine variations of contractual language that could have made an intended meaning clearer. A similar survey regime has been applied successfully in trademark and unfair competition law to interpret precontractual messages. To demonstrate the technique, Professor Strahilevitz applies the survey interpretation method to several real cases in which courts struggled to interpret contracts.

Lior Jacob Strahilevitz is Sidley Austin Professor of Law. This Chicago's Best Ideas lecture was presented on January 31, 2018.

Lior Jacob Strahilevitz, “Interpreting Contracts via Surveys and Experiments”

A central question in law and economics is how people will behave in the presence of legal rules. An essential part of that inquiry is what makes people happy or unhappy – what increases or decreases their “subjective well-being.” There is ample evidence that individuals make decisions based in part on what they believe will improve their well-being. In order to understand how legal rules will influence behavior, it is thus vital to understand how those rules will affect happiness. More generally, viewing law through a hedonic lens can help legal policymakers determine whether (or not) a given law or policy will be beneficial for the individuals affected by it.

Jonathan S. Masur is John P. Wilson Professor of Law, David and Celia Hilliard Research Scholar, and Director of the Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz Program in Behavioral Law, Finance and Economics. The 2018 Coase Lecture in Law and Economics was presented on February 6, 2018.

Jonathan S. Masur, "The Behavioral Law & Economics of Happiness"

The idea that workplaces could benefit from an incest taboo is not one of Chicago’s best, but one of Margaret Mead’s. Professor Mary Anne Case has been promoting it and explaining its relevance to Title VII enforcement long before Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement gave it new relevance and visibility.

Mary Anne Case is the Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law. This Chicago's Best Ideas lecture was presented on February 21, 2018.

Mary Anne Case, "Cultivating an Incest Taboo in the Workplace"

Does legal education matter? In this lecture, Professor Todd Henderson presents some data on this question, using the behavior of corporate executives as an instrument. Looking at the 10% of large, public company CEOs who are lawyers, the talk tries to determine whether CEOs trained as lawyers act differently than CEOs trained in other ways. Do lawyer CEO firms get sued more or less or the same as other firms? Do they manage litigation differently? And, if they do, what is the impact on the bottom line? There is a burgeoning literature on how personal characteristics, from physical traits to birth order to education, impact CEO decision making. The lecture discusses this literature as well, and situates legal education in it.

This Loop Luncheon talk was presented on May 4, 2018.

Download the slides (PDF): https://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/2018-05/loop_luncheon_2018_slides.pdf

M. Todd Henderson, "Lawyer CEOs"

Supreme Court decisions affecting the constitutional rights of students in the nation's public schools have consistently generated bitter controversy. From racial segregation to unauthorized immigration, from antiwar protests to compulsory flag salutes, from economic inequality to teacher-led prayer: these are among the defining cultural issues that the Court has addressed in elementary and secondary schools. Drawing from his provocative new book, The Schoolhouse Gate, Justin Driver discusses the historic legal battles waged over education that continue to threaten our basic constitutional order.

This talk was recorded on October 4, 2018, as part of the Law School's annual First Monday lecture series.

Justin Driver, "The Future of the Supreme Court: The Constitution of Public Schools"

One of the University of Chicago Law School’s best known ideas or outputs over the last fifty years is that the common law (made by judges and often passed down and adapted over many years) is efficient. It was an idea advanced by Richard Posner, with respect to tort law, in his time as a professor here, but it is also reflected in his and other judicial opinions which students across the country meet in almost every non-constitutional course. What does this idea really mean, and is it plausible or even correct? If yes, why did the common law decline in influence? Statutes and regulations have far more impact on our present-day lives than does the common law. Judges are now known and evaluated for their constitutional decisions rather than for what they do in contracts and torts and other areas that are often described as common-law subjects. Could the common law solve our current concerns about climate change and autonomous vehicles?

Saul Levmore is the William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of Law.

This Chicago's Best Ideas lecture was presented on October 15, 2018.

Saul Levmore, "If the Common Law was Efficient, Why Did It Decline?"

This keynote for the 2018 Legal Forum Symposium was recorded on November 2, 2018.

Valerie B. Jarrett is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Law School and former senior advisor to President Barack Obama. Emily Buss is the Mark and Barbara Fried Professor of Law at the Law School.

Law in the Era of #MeToo: A Conversation with Valerie Jarrett

On the first Monday in October, the Supreme Court session opens. Each fall, the University of Chicago Law School invites faculty members to offer insight into some of the issues the Court will hear in the upcoming year. This year we heard from William Baude, Professor of Law and Aaron Director Research Scholar, and Anthony J. Casey, Professor of Law.

Recorded on October 15, 2019, at The Standard Club in Chicago.

William Baude and Anthony J. Casey, "Supreme Court Preview 2019: Highlights and Perspectives"

One of Chicago’s Best Ideas was the Coase Theorem, which reminds us daily that people can bargain around law or even before legal intervention is sought. But do we have too much law and too little bargaining around it? The number of cases and judges has grown dramatically over time and many problems are outsourced to the legal system, rather than being handled person-to-person. In this talk, I will consider conventional explanations for the astonishing growth of the legal system, and then suggest that it is not entirely good news. We have become addicted to law, and like most addictions, this one is difficult to undo and likely to grow.

Saul Levmore is William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of Law. This Chicago's Best Ideas talk was presented on November 5, 2019.

Saul Levmore, "Addictive Law"

"Chief Justice John Roberts: Defining the Supreme Court as its Leader and at the Center"

Joan Biskupic is a full-time CNN legal analyst and author of a 2019 biography of Chief Justice John Roberts. Before joining CNN in 2017, Biskupic was an editor-in-charge for Legal Affairs at Reuters and, previously, the Supreme Court correspondent for the Washington Post and for USA Today.

This Ulysses and Marguerite Schwartz Memorial Lecture was presented on November 19, 2019.

Joan Biskupic, "Chief Justice John Roberts: Defining the Supreme Court..."

The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol are among the most important human rights documents of the post-WW II period. Yet the universalization of the refugee status after the 1967 Protocol has given rise to a series of discrepancies between the letter of the Convention and the purposes it is being asked to serve. In particular, the five-protected categories specified by the Convention have come under criticism. There are also tensions between the Eurocentric discourse and jurisprudence of refugee protection and the fact that the largest numbers of the world’s refugees are housed in Third World Countries.

With globalization of the refugee condition, new trends have also emerged: States seek to create measures of “non-entrée”—no access—to their territories by various modes of outsourcing monitoring and enforcement. These range from the installation of refugee processing centers in bordering countries and along the Mediterranean seacoast in particular, to the signing of special bilateral agreements to prevent refugees from accessing the states’ territory (as between the US and Mexico) and  to the more radical measure of simply “excising” territory, that is, declaring it outside the bounds of the jurisdiction of that state. These trends, along with criminalization of the refugee status, have undermined the universal human promise of the “right to have rights” (Hannah Arendt).

In conclusion I ask why cruelty is spreading in liberal democracies and discuss three normative responses to the current predicament: liberal nationalist, liberal internationalist and cosmopolitan interdependence. I suggest a fourth alternative which synthesizes elements of each.

Seyla Benhabib is the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. This Dewey Lecture in Law and Philosophy was presented on January 15, 2020.

Seyla Benhabib, "The End of the 1951 Refugee Convention?"

"The Trust Revolution: How the Digitization of Trust Will Revolutionize Business & Government"

In this CBI, Professor Henderson will examine how Internet platforms--eBay, Uber, AirBnB--relate to the Code of Hammurabi, Medieval guilds, the New York Stock Exchange, and corporate brands. All of these institutions, along with religions and governments and families, are in large part about providing trust to enable human cooperation. By undertaking a genealogy of trust, we can illuminate modern debates about the role and scope of government in regulating the daily lives of citizens.

M. Todd Henderson is the Michael J. Marks Professor of Law. This Chicago's Best Ideas talk was presented on January 27, 2020.

M. Todd Henderson, "The Trust Revolution: How the Digitization of Trust Will Revolutionize..."

This Chicago's Best Ideas talk was presented on February 10, 2020.

Anup Malani and David A. Weisbach, "Addressing Income Inequality"

On the first Monday in October, the Supreme Court session opens. Each fall, the University of Chicago Law School invites faculty members to offer insight into some of the issues the Court will hear in the upcoming year.

This event was recorded on September 15, 2020, and features Aziz Huq, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, and Jennifer Nou, Professor of Law.

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