The 17th annual Coase Lecture, presented by Ronald Coase on April 1, 2003.

Ronald H. Coase: The 17th Annual Coase Lecture

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

In Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court dismantled one of the two pillars of the Voting Rights Act: Section 5, which had barred southern jurisdictions from changing their election laws unless they first received federal approval. The burning question now is what will happen to minority representation in the South in the absence of Section 5. In this talk, Prof. Stephanopoulos explores the differences between the defunct Section 5 and Section 2 of the VRA, which continues to apply nationwide. His sobering conclusion is that Section 2 provides substantially less protection with respect to both redistricting and franchise restrictions. The demise of Section 5 is therefore likely to reverse decades of progress for voting rights in the South.

Nicholas Stephanopoulos is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. This Chicago's Best Ideas talk was recorded on November 13, 2013.

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, "The South After Shelby County"

How Should We Interpret our Constitutions? 
A Debate between Professors Baude and Harel

Moderated by Professor McAdams

William Baude is Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, where he teaches federal courts and constitutional law. His current research projects include papers on originalism, historical practice in constitutional law, federalism, the Supreme Court, and conflicts of law. His recent publications include "Rethinking the Federal Eminent Domain Power," and "Beyond DOMA: State Choice of Law in Federal Statutes." He also contributes to two legal blogs, the Volokh Conspiracy and SCOTUSBlog.

Alon Harel is Mizock Professor of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of Why Law Matters (2014) where he argues that (some) legal institutions and legal procedures are valuable and matter as such, irrespective of their instrumental value. His areas of expertise include legal and political theory, criminal law theory, constitutional law theory, human rights, and law and economics.

Richard H. McAdams is the Bernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law and Aaron Director Research Scholar. He writes on criminal law and procedure, social norms, the expressive function of law, inequality, and law and literature. He is co-editor of the 2013 volume on Fairness in Law and Economics and the author of the forthcoming book, The Expressive Powers of Law. He has served as a member of the National Science Foundation Advisory Panel for Law & Social Sciences, the editorial board of the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, and the Board of Directors of the American Law and Economics Association.

This event was sponsored by the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society and was recorded on November 25, 2014.

Baude, Harel, & McAdams, "How Should We Interpret our Constitutions?"

Although people sometimes violate the law, there is more legal compliance than we can explain by ordinary economic theory – that legal sanctions deter noncompliance. In some domains of international law and constitutional law, there is no credible threat of legal sanctions, yet there is compliance. In some historic examples, “courts” lacking any sanctioning power resolved disputes arising in medieval Iceland, among 18th century pirates, and among 19th century gold-rushers. Professor McAdams explains these and other historic and contemporary examples of compliance by focusing attention on law’s expressive power. First, legal expression provides a salient means of coordinating behavior. Second, law reveals information about risks and attitudes. These two expressive powers are distinct from law’s coercive power.

Richard H. McAdams is Bernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law and Aaron Director Research Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School. This talk was recorded on January 6, 2015, as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series.

Richard McAdams, "How Law Works  Expressively"

Martha Minow, Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
with comments by Martha Nussbaum, Aziz Huq, and Michael Schill

What role if any should forgiveness play in law and legal systems? By forgiveness, I mean: a conscious, deliberate decision to forgo rightful grounds for whoever has committed a wrong or harm. Law may penalize those who apologize and in so doing make forgiveness by the victim less likely. Law may construct adversarial processes that render forgiveness less likely than it would otherwise be. Or law can give people chances to meet together, in spaces where they may apologize and forgive.

This lecture was presented on January 8, 2015, at the University of Chicago Law School as part of the Brennan Center Jorde Symposium.

Martha Minow, "Forgiveness, Law and Justice"

In a conversation with David A. Strauss, Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law, US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan reflects on decision-making, persuasion, and hunting with Scalia.

This event took place on February 2, 2015, at the University of Chicago Law School.

A Conversation With Elena Kagan

This panel was moderated by Professor Siegler and included Deputy Dean Ginsburg and Professors Huq, McAdams, and Randolph Stone.

The event took place on February 4, 2015. It was presented by BLSA in partnership with the Law School and cosponsored by ACS, APALSA, Criminal Law Society, Defenders, Human Rights Law Society, LLSA, LSRJ, LWC, PILS, and SALSA.

Panel: "Ferguson and Beyond: Criminal Procedure and Police Killings"

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"

Professor Tasioulas discusses the notion of the ‘minimum core obligations’ associated with economic, social and cultural human rights, such as the rights to education and health. The idea of minimum core obligations, which is a nascent doctrine in international human rights law, is heavily contested both as to its meaning and utility.

John Tasioulas is Visiting Professor of Law and the Charles J. Merriam Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School; Yeoh Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Law at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London; and Director of the Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy, and Law.

Presented by the International Human Rights Clinics and the Human Rights Law Society on May 5, 2016.

John Tasioulas, "Minimum Core Obligations: Human Rights in the Here and Now"

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"

On the first Monday in October, the Supreme Court session opens. Professors Adam Chilton, Aziz Huq, and Daniel Hemel offer insight into some of the issues the Court will hear in the upcoming year.

Recorded on September 18, 2017, in Washington, DC.

Supreme Court Preview 2017: Highlights and Perspectives

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"

With commentary by Professor Jonathan Masur

John G. Malcolm oversees The Heritage Foundation’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as director of the think tank’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. In addition to his duties at Heritage, Malcolm is chairman of the Criminal Law Practice Group of the Federalist Society. Malcolm has previously served in both the public and private sectors. Among other positions, he has worked as general counsel at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America, as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, as a partner in the Atlanta law firm of Malcolm & Schroeder, and as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Atlanta fraud and public corruption section. Malcolm began his law career clerking for Judge James C. Hill on the Eleventh Circuit and for Chief Judge Charles A. Moye, Jr. on the Northern District of Georgia. Malcolm is a graduate of Harvard Law School and holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Columbia College.

Jonathan Masur received a BS in physics and an AB in political science from Stanford University in 1999 and his JD from Harvard Law School in 2003. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Chief Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and for Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He joined the Law School faculty in 2007 and received tenure in 2012. He served as Deputy Dean from 2012 to 2014 and was named the John P. Wilson Professor of Law in 2014. He won the Graduating Students Award for Teaching Excellence in 2014 and 2017 and the Class of 2016 Award. He has served as director of the Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz Program in Behavioral Law, Finance and Economics since its founding.

John G. Malcolm, "Current Topics in Criminal Justice Reform"

The choice of new benchmark interest rate should be of special importance to practitioners as well as academics that study law and economics. As new alternative rates are being considered in the United States, this half day conference, co-sponsored by the University of Chicago Law School, brought together leading academics, as well as representatives from banks, law firms, swap dealers, regulators and others to share their views on design and implementation of new indexes in loan documents, swap agreements and other financial contracts.

Dr. David Bowman, Special Adviser to the Board, Federal Reserve Board, delivers the keynote for the conference "Transition to New Interest Rate Benchmarks: SOFR, Ameribor and Beyond" on April 3, 2018.

Introductory remarks by:

Dr. Richard L. Sandor, CEO, American Financial Exchange and Aaron Director Lecturer in Law and Economics, University of Chicago Law School

Robert S. Rivkin, Deputy Mayor of the City of Chicago

Thomas J. Miles, Dean and Clifton R. Musser Professor of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Law School

David Bowman, "Alternative Reference Rates: SOFR, LIBOR, and Issues for Transitions"

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"

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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