Colloquium in Law, Philosophy & Political Theory

Fall Semester 2025 – Cross-Sectional Course: Law 210.2A sec.001; Political Science 211; & Philosophy 290-6

All sessions for Fall 2025 will be held in person in Room 141 Law Building on Fridays from 12:10 pm-2:00 pm (until 3:00 pm for enrolled students only). Papers for upcoming talks will become available to download in the table below one week before their respective workshop dates and will be taken down after their workshop has concluded. Please note that we can only distribute each paper during the week of its workshop.

The full Fall 2025 workshop schedule is available for download here.

Course Description:

This course is a colloquium for discussion of scholarly work-in-progress in moral, political, and legal theory. The class creates a space for students to engage directly with philosophers, political theorists, and legal scholars working on normative questions, with the goal of fostering critical thinking about concepts of value and developing analytical thinking and writing skills. Another aim is to bring together people from different disciplines and perspectives who have strong normative interests or who speak to issues philosophers and theorists should know something about.

The theme for the Fall 2025 workshop is “Expression: Its Value and its Norms.” We’ll look at new and recent work on free speech in a range of contexts, including political speech, artistic expression, online speech, campus protest, and academic freedom. Presenters are Eugene Volokh (Hoover), Erwin Chemerinsky (Berkeley), Jacob Mchangama (Vanderbilt), Sarah Song (Berkeley), David Cole (Georgetown), Seana Shiffrin (UCLA), Rae Langton (Cambridge), Mary Anne Franks (GW Law), Daphne Keller (Stanford), Adrienne Stone (Melbourne Law), Erin Miller (USC), Lea Ypi (LSE), and Ben Eidelson (Harvard).

This semester, the colloquium is co-taught by Josh Cohen and R. Jay Wallace.

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 all in attendance, including both enrolled and non-enrolled students, faculty, and visitors. After a short break at 2:00 p.m., discussion will continue with only enrolled students for the final 50 minutes.

This is a cross-listed/room-shared course with the Philosophy and Political Science Departments. Students may enroll through Law (Law 210.2A), Philosophy (Philosophy 290), or Political Science.

The first meeting of the course will be on Friday, August 22, 2025.

Zoom is available for here those who cannot attend in person.