Law School Lectures (video)

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. In the 2015 Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture, Geoffrey R. Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, explores historical attitudes to homosexuality, how laws discriminating against homosexuals first came to be seen as raising possible constitutional questions, and how the nation’s high court has come to the threshold of recognizing a constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Richard H. McAdams, Bernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law and Aaron Director Research Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School, discusses his new book. When asked why people obey the law, legal scholars usually give two answers: Law deters illicit activities by specifying sanctions, and it possesses legitimate authority in the eyes of society. McAdams shifts the prism on this familiar question to offer another compelling explanation of how the law creates compliance: through its expressive power to coordinate our behavior and inform our beliefs. People seek order, and they sometimes obtain a mutually shared benefit when each expects the other to behave in accordance with law. Traffic regulations, for example, coordinate behavior by expressing an orderly means of driving. A traffic sign that tells one driver to yield to another creates expectations in the minds of both drivers and so allows each to avoid collision. McAdams generalizes from traffic to constitutional and international law and many other domains. In addition to its coordinating function, law expresses information. Legislation reveals something important about the risks of the behavior being regulated and social attitudes toward it. Anti-smoking laws, for example, signal both the lawmakers’ recognition of the health risks associated with smoking and the public’s general disapproval. This information causes individuals to update their beliefs and alter their behavior.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. As Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for three years under the Obama administration, Cass R. Sunstein oversaw a far-reaching restructuring of America’s regulatory state. He discusses his book “Simpler: The Future of Government,” in which he pulls back the curtain to show what was done, how it works, and why government will never be the same again.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The Western democratic practice to single out religious liberty for special treatment under the law is not in sync with the world we live in today, argues University of Chicago Law School professor Brian Leiter in his new book, Why Tolerate Religion? All people, both religious and non-religious, have certain kinds of beliefs about things they feel they absolutely must do, something he calls “claims of conscience.” In the book, Leiter, the Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence, explores whether there are good reasons behind the tendency to grant legal exemptions to religious claims of conscience while largely rejecting non-religious ones.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The Western democratic practice to single out religious liberty for special treatment under the law is not in sync with the world we live in today, argues University of Chicago Law School professor Brian Leiter in his new book, Why Tolerate Religion? All people, both religious and non-religious, have certain kinds of beliefs about things they feel they absolutely must do, something he calls “claims of conscience.” In the book, Leiter, the Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence, explores whether there are good reasons behind the tendency to grant legal exemptions to religious claims of conscience while largely rejecting non-religious ones.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The Western democratic practice to single out religious liberty for special treatment under the law is not in sync with the world we live in today, argues University of Chicago Law School professor Brian Leiter in his new book, Why Tolerate Religion? All people, both religious and non-religious, have certain kinds of beliefs about things they feel they absolutely must do, something he calls “claims of conscience.” In the book, Leiter, the Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence, explores whether there are good reasons behind the tendency to grant legal exemptions to religious claims of conscience while largely rejecting non-religious ones.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Todd Itami, rising third-year student in the University of Chicago Law School, moderates a debate on the constitutionality of President Obama’s healthcare program at an event on Monday, May 14, 2012 at the University of Chicago Law School. Over the course of an hour, Richard Epstein, James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, and Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law at Northwestern University Law School, debate the merits and flaws of the controversial healthcare program. The event was hosted by the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. James C. Oldham, professor of Law and Legal History at Georgetown Law, discusses the history of law in Pre-Industrial England and its relationship with the popular press at the time.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Sam Zell is one of the world's leading investors in real estate, energy logistics, transportation, media, and health care. He and University of Chicago Law School Dean Michael Schill discuss the connections between and impact of the economy, law, and entrepreneurialism.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Richard Sandor and M. Todd Henderson discuss Sandor's new book, "Good Derivatives: A Story of Financial and Environmental Innovation." Sandor gives insight into markets' roles in environmental and public policy.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Jim Hormel, America's first openly gay ambassador, University of Chicago alumnus, and former dean of the law school, shares his insights into his ambassadorial quest and his perspective on what the rebellious Chicago students of the 1960s have in common with their peers today.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Elizabeth Anderson, professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, considers how Thomas Paine, one of the Founding Fathers of the U.S., grounded the justification of social insurance in a theory of private property rights. She explores the ironic inversion of social insurance from a bulwark of to a perceived assault on capitalism.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. M. Todd Henderson, professor at the University of Chicago Law School, examines the rise of pay for performance in corporate America. He considers legal regulation of executive compensation and the use of performance incentives in other areas, ranging from hospitals to schools to government bureaucracies.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Catherine MacKinnon, the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School specializes in sex equality issues under international and constitutional law. She pioneered the legal claim for sexual harassment and, with Andrea Dworkin, created ordinances recognizing pornography as a civil rights violation and the Swedish model for addressing prostitution. Representing Bosnian women survivors of Serbian genocidal sexual atrocities, she won Kadic v. Karadzic, whcih first recognized rape as an act of genocide. Her scholarly books include Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989), Sex Equality (2001/2007), and Are Women Human? (2006). In her visiting lecture to University of Chicago Law School students, Professor MacKinnon discussed issues raised in her book Are Women Human?: And Other International Dialogues. Her work exposes the consequences and significance of the systematic maltreatment of women and its systemic condonation by taking us inside the workings of nation-states, where the oppression of women defines community life and distributes power in society and government, and inside the heart of the international law of conflict to ask why the international community can rally against terrorists' violence, but not violence against women.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. As we near the end of the first term of our nation’s first African American President, does race still matter? How have our perceptions of race changed? Craig Futterman shares observations and experiences arising from his and his students’ engagement working on issues of police accountability from the ground floor of a family high rise in a Chicago public housing community that made up eight square blocks of Chicago’s South Side. Prof. Futterman argues that engaging this “view from the ground” is necessary to inform our policies and conversations around fundamental issues of race and class in America and to move us toward a more just society.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. On October 27, 2011, the University of Chicago Law School students and the public were invited to a celebration of the inaugural Sidley Austin Professorship, to which Deputy Dean Lior Strahilevitz was recently appointed. Strahilevitz joined the Law School faculty in 2002 after practicing law in Seattle and clerking for Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his JD in 1999 from Yale Law School. Strahilevitz is an expert in property and land use, privacy, intellectual property, law and technology, and motorist behavior. He is the author of the recently published book Information and Exclusion (Yale 2011). At the event, Strahilevitz presented “Exclusion and Exclusivity: Past, Present & Future.”

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Since 1992, the University of Chicago Law School's annual Ronald H. Coase Lecture in Law and Economics has usually given by relatively younger member of the faculty. This year's Coase Lecture in Law and Economics was given by Professor Thomas Miles.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Many of the assumptions people have about black youth-that they are politically detached and negatively influenced by rap music and videos-are false stereotypes, according to a new University of Chicago study by Prof. Cathy Cohen, based on surveys and conversations with the youth themselves.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Harvey Levin, '75, is the Executive Producer of TMZ.com and TMZ TV. He also is a Host of The People's Court and was Creator and Executive Producer of Celebrity Justice. Mr. Levin has taught at the University of Miami School of Law, Whittier College School of Law, and Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The University of Chicago Law School is proud to welcome Professor Sarah Barringer Gordon of Penn Law School for the 2010 Fulton Lecture in Legal History.Professor Gordon's lecture, entitled "The Spirit of the Law: Separation of Church and State from 1945-1990," will touch on the same themes explored in her book The Spirit of the Law, published this year by Harvard University Press.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Amartya Sen received the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on welfare economics. In addition to being the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor at Harvard University, he is also a fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge.Amartya Sen's books have been translated into more than thirty languages. Professor Sen, widely considered a ground-breaker among late twentieth-century economists for his insistence on discussing issues seen as marginal by most economists, mounted one of the few major challenges to the economic model that posited self-interest as the prime motivating factor of human activity. His most recent book, The Idea of Justice (London: Allen Lane, 2009), has been described by The Economist as "commanding summation of Mr. Sen's own work on economic reasoning and on the elements and measurement of human well-being.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. This is the keynote address for "Creating Capabilities: Sources and Consequences for Law and Social Policy,"a conference examining a variety of conceptions of human capability, including the Human Development and Capabilities Approach, in relation to recent literature on the economics, neuroscience, and psychology of human development, in order to enrich both fields.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The 2010 Coase Lecture in Law and Economics will be presented by Assistant Professor of Law Jacob Gersen. Entitled "Political Economy of Public Law," the lecture will focus on economic analysis of political institutions, mainly separation of powers problems and different strategies for allocating government power in constitutional theory.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The University of Chicago Law School is proud to welcome Gary Haugen '91 for the 2010 Ulysses and Marguerite Schwarz Memorial Lecture. The Schwartz Lectureship is held by a distinguished lawyer or teacher whose experience is in the academic field or practice of public service. Haugen is President and CEO of International Justice Mission, a human rights organization with operations in 12 countries. The Schwartz Lecture will take place Thursday, February 18 at 4:00 p.m. in the Weymouth Kirkland Courtroom.Haugen's lecture, entitled "A New Mandate for Human Rights: Why a Half Century of Human Rights Activism and International Development is Failing the Poor, and What Can Be Done about It," will probe why significant contributions by the international development and modern human rights movements have failed to establish a platform of basic rule of law in the developing world.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The subject of this year's Dewey Lecture is the political morality and wisdom of putting political leaders on trial after we have endured their leadership (and other nations, perhaps, have endured their crimes). Political trials have a long history-and the judgments we make of their judgments are highly contested. Professor Walzer will try to suggest a comparative politics of political trials; they have a very different character, and very different purposes, in different national and international settings. And, like all trials, their justice and wisdom hang on their character and purpose.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Organized by Martha Nussbaum, Alison LaCroix, and Jane Dailey, this conference is the second in a series of law and literature conferences, the first of which was the successful Shakespeare conference held in the spring of 2009.This conference focuses on the interplay between law and gender in English literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.It seeks to explore, through a legal lens, the literary themes generated by gender and gender roles from Henry Fielding to George Bernard Shaw.The conference hopes to imbue a broader understanding of the legal and social philosophies that changed and were changed by the respective roles of women and men in England, encouraging a deeper and more complex appreciation in the fields of both literature and the law.Distinguished writer Sara Paretsky, author of the V.I. Warshawski detective novels, will be a guest speaker.Following the tradition set by the first law and literature conference, faculty and student actors will perform dramatic scenes from English plays of the era.The conference is co-sponsored by the Center for Gender Studies.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Organized by Martha Nussbaum, Alison LaCroix, and Jane Dailey, this conference is the second in a series of law and literature conferences, the first of which was the successful Shakespeare conference held in the spring of 2009.This conference focuses on the interplay between law and gender in English literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.It seeks to explore, through a legal lens, the literary themes generated by gender and gender roles from Henry Fielding to George Bernard Shaw.The conference hopes to imbue a broader understanding of the legal and social philosophies that changed and were changed by the respective roles of women and men in England, encouraging a deeper and more complex appreciation in the fields of both literature and the law.Distinguished writer Sara Paretsky, author of the V.I. Warshawski detective novels, will be a guest speaker.Following the tradition set by the first law and literature conference, faculty and student actors will perform dramatic scenes from English plays of the era.The conference is co-sponsored by the Center for Gender Studies.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. A celebration of the work of Frank Easterbrook, '73, Senior Lecturer in Law and Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. There were three days of the event with three different foci - (1) 1/11: Easterbrook on Contracts and Copyright (2) 1/12: Easterbrook on the Constitution (3) 1/13: Easterbrook on Statutes

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. A celebration of the work of Frank Easterbrook, '73, Senior Lecturer in Law and Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. There were three days of the event with three different foci - (1) 1/11: Easterbrook on Contracts and Copyright (2) 1/12: Easterbrook on the Constitution (3) 1/13: Easterbrook on Statutes

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. A celebration of the work of Frank Easterbrook, '73, Senior Lecturer in Law and Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. There were three days of the event with three different foci - (1) 1/11: Easterbrook on Contracts and Copyright (2) 1/12: Easterbrook on the Constitution (3) 1/13: Easterbrook on Statutes

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Please join us for a lecture by Nobel Laureate in Economics Professor Roger Myerson. Professor Myerson's talk will analyze the vital relationships between local democracy and national politics and will consider how alternative systems of local elections could strengthen the national democratic system. The talk will focus on the problems of building democracy in Pakistan and the world today. Following this discussion, there will be a question and answer period led by distinguished moderator, Dr. Mariano Grondona as well as an opportunity for questions from the audience.Roger B. Myerson is the Glen A. Lloyd distinguished service professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Myerson has made seminal contributions to the fields of economics and political science. In game theory, he introduced refinements of Nash's equilibrium concept, and he developed techniques to characterize the effects of communication when individuals have different information. His analysis of incentive constraints in economic communication introduced some of the fundamental ideas in mechanism design theory, including the revelation principle and the revenue-equivalence theorem in auctions and bargaining. Myerson has also applied game-theoretic tools to political science, analyzing how political incentives can be affected by different electoral systems and constitutional structures. He was awarded the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in recognition of his contributions to mechanism design theory.In the 1980s, Dr. Grondona spent time at Harvard University as visiting professor to the Department of Government, and as a visiting scholar and researcher at the Center for International Affairs. Prior to that, he received his doctorate in law and social sciences at the University of Buenos Aires and completed postgraduate studies in sociology at the University of Madrid and in political science at the Institute of Political Studies in Madrid.He is the author of several works, including Las Condiciones Culturales del Desarrollo Econ~A^3mico (1999) and La Corrupci~A^3n (1993).

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Please join us for a lecture by Nobel Laureate in Economics Professor Roger Myerson. Professor Myerson's talk will analyze the vital relationships between local democracy and national politics and will consider how alternative systems of local elections could strengthen the national democratic system. The talk will focus on the problems of building democracy in Pakistan and the world today. Following this discussion, there will be a question and answer period led by distinguished moderator, Dr. Mariano Grondona as well as an opportunity for questions from the audience.Roger B. Myerson is the Glen A. Lloyd distinguished service professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Myerson has made seminal contributions to the fields of economics and political science. In game theory, he introduced refinements of Nash's equilibrium concept, and he developed techniques to characterize the effects of communication when individuals have different information. His analysis of incentive constraints in economic communication introduced some of the fundamental ideas in mechanism design theory, including the revelation principle and the revenue-equivalence theorem in auctions and bargaining. Myerson has also applied game-theoretic tools to political science, analyzing how political incentives can be affected by different electoral systems and constitutional structures. He was awarded the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in recognition of his contributions to mechanism design theory.In the 1980s, Dr. Grondona spent time at Harvard University as visiting professor to the Department of Government, and as a visiting scholar and researcher at the Center for International Affairs. Prior to that, he received his doctorate in law and social sciences at the University of Buenos Aires and completed postgraduate studies in sociology at the University of Madrid and in political science at the Institute of Political Studies in Madrid.He is the author of several works, including Las Condiciones Culturales del Desarrollo Econ~A^3mico (1999) and La Corrupci~A^3n (1993).

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Asst. Prof. Allison LaCroix discusses her book, The Ideological Origins of American Federalism

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The current global financial crisis carries a "made in America" label. In this forthright and incisive book, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz explains how America exported bad economics, bad policies, and bad behavior to the rest of the world, only to cobble together a haphazard and ineffective response when the markets finally seized up. Drawing on his academic expertise, his years spent shaping policy in the Clinton administration and at the World Bank, and his more recent role as head of a UN Commission charged with reforming the global financial system, Stiglitz then outlines a way forward building on ideas that he has championed his entire career: restoring the balance between markets and government; addressing the inequalities of the global financial system; and demanding more good ideas (and less ideology) from economists. Freefall combines an account of the current crisis with a discussion of the broader economic issues at stake.Joseph E. Stiglitz received the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics. He is the author of Making Globalization Work, Globalization and Its Discontents, and The Three Trillion Dollar War (with Linda Bilmes). He teaches at Columbia University.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Is China a rogue donor, as some media pundits suggest? Or is China helping the developing world pave a pathway out of poverty, as the Chinese claim? This well-timed book provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities, explaining what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, how much aid they give, and how it all fits into their "going global" strategy. Will Chinese engagement benefit Africa? Using hard data and a series of vivid stories ranging across agriculture, industry, natural resources, and governance, Brautigam's fascinating book provides an answer.Deborah Brautigam is the author of Chinese Aid and African Development, Aid Dependence and Governance, and coeditor of Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries. She is a professor in the International Development Program at American University's School of International Service in Washington, DC.Cosponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Albie Sachs, Former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, delivers a lecture entitled, "Social and Economic Rights as Fundamental Human Rights"

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Albie Sachs, Former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, delivers a lecture entitled, "Does the Law Have a Sense of Humor?"

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. In his latest book, "The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power," Jonathan Mahler chronicles the challenge to the assertion of presidential power in the designation of enemy combatants.Written with the cooperation of the attorneys who represented Hamdan, Lt. Commander Charles Swift and Georgetown constitutional law scholar Neal Katyal, "Hamdan v. Ramdan" is the inside story of the historic Supreme Court case and its effect on the executive authority and the rule of law.Mahler and Katyal will appear together at this event to discuss the book, the case, and their perspectives on the future of presidential power.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Maria Woltjen, Director of the Immigrant Children's Advocacy Project, describes how she founded a program to provide unaccompanied immigrant children with guardians ad litem. In 2005, nearly 8,000 unaccompanied immigrant children were taken into federal custody and many of these children had to face immigration judges without any legal aid. By working with multilingual law students, The Center pairs advocates with immigrant and refugee children to ensure the child's welfare is represented, not the interests of traffickers or smugglers.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Dr. Yuki Tanaka of the Hiroshima Peace Institute examines the question of the criminality of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the responsibility of American political and military leaders who were closely involved in the decision-making and execution of the order to drop the bombs. Criminality is examined in accordance with international law effective at the time that the bombs were dropped and in the light of the Charter of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. The lecture also examines the history and present situation of indiscriminate aerial bombing of civilian popu^A-lations. It examines how the use of this tactic started, what kind of military logic was used to justify it, and why it is still being widely sanctioned despite the fact that large numbers of civilians are repeatedly victimized in various war-torn regions of the world. It further explores how we should utilize the result of the International Peoples’ Tribunal of Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to increase understanding of the fact that killing civilians is a crime against humanity, regardless of the asserted military justification.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Albie Sachs, Former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, delivers a lecture entitled, "Terrorism, Torture and the Rule of Law"

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Albie Sachs, Former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, delivers a lecture entitled, "Punitive Justice vs. Restorative Justice"

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The Center for Latin American Studies and The Program on Global Environment at The University of Chicago are pleased to present an interdisciplinary conference on "Environmental Policy, Social Movements, and Science for the Brazilian Amazon", November 5-6, 2009. The conference will assess the last twenty years of regional structural projects, social movements, and science and technology in the Amazon, as well as what roles and opportunities are created for the region by science, technology, traditional knowledge and markets for environmental services, within the standards of forest preservation.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. From the Berlin Airlift to the Iraq War, the UN Security Council has stood at the heart of global politics. Part public theater, part smoke-filled backroom, the Council has enjoyed notable successes and suffered ignominious failures, but it has always provided a space for the five great powers to sit down together. Five to Rule Them All tells the inside story of this remarkable diplomatic creation. Drawing on extensive research, including dozens of interviews with serving and former ambassadors on the Council, the book chronicles political battles and personality clashes as it opens the closed doors of its meeting room. What emerges here is a revealing portrait of the most powerful diplomatic body in the world.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The University of Chicago Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Alumni Group presents Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freud distinguished service professor of law and ethics in the Law School, Department of Philosophy, and the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, lecturing on the legal and moral debates surrounding same-sex marriage in the U.S. The post-lecture discussion will be led by Melanie Rowen, AB'99, JD'04, attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. On January 16, Robert E. Goodin, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and of Social & Political Theory in the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University, presented the 2007-2008 John Dewey Lecture on Jurisprudence. Entitled "An Epistemic Case for Legal Moralism," the talk was introduced by Cass Sunstein and addressed the following issues:Ignorance of the law is no excuse, or so we are told. But why on earth not? The statute books run to hundreds of volumes. How can an ordinary citizen know what all is in them? The best way might be for law (at least in its wide-scope duty-conferring aspects) to track broad moral principles that ordinary citizens can know and apply for themselves. In contrast to more high-minded and deeply principled arguments, this epistemic argument for legal moralism is purely pragmatic "i? 1/2but importantly so. For law to do what law is supposed to do, which is to be action-guiding, people need to be able to intuit without detailed investigation what the law is for most common and most important cases of their conduct, and to intuit when their intuitions are likely to be unreliable and hence that they need to investigate further what the law actually is.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Gender inequality in a variety of forms exists in all religious traditions. Contemporary Muslims in order to solve this problem and reconcile their religious heritage with the modern world have proposed various solutions to this dilemma. This talk will examine these proposed solutions as well as assess the strengths and weakness of these approaches. Akbar Ganji is an Iranian journalist and writer. This talk was presented on May 8, 2009 as the keynote of the conference "Democracy and Gender Equality in the Muslim World," held at the University of Chicago Law School. Introduction by Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. In April 2008, the Law School's Law and Economics Program hosted a conferenceentitled "Contested Commodities: Reframing the Debate on Financial Incentives in the Supply of Genetic Materials." The conference, which was organized by Visiting Professor of Law Michele Goodwin, looked at the law, economics, and ethics of the burgeoning market for human genetic materials ranging from blood, sperm, and ova to harvested organs and even newborn babies. The keynote address (video of which is posted here) was by Richard Epstein, and audio files of all of the panels are available from the conference webpage.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Scenes from Hamlet, As You Like It and Measure for Measure, presented at The University of Chicago Law School's "Shakespeare and the Law" conference, recorded May 15, 2009. This conference brought together thinkers from law, literature, and philosophy to investigate the legal dimensions of Shakespeare's plays. Participants explored the ways in which the plays show awareness of law and legal regimes and comment on a variety of legal topics, ranging from general themes, such as mercy and the rule of law, to highly concrete legal issues of his time. Other papers investigated the subsequent influence of his plays on the law and explored more general issues concerning the relationship between law and literature.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. On February 19, Professor of Law Lee Fennell presented the 2008 Coase Lecture on Law and Economics. Problems involving the aggregation and division of entitlements, she noted, are ubiquitous in law and in everyday life. Fragments held by multiple parties–such as parcels of land, effort, or segments of a bridge–often must be assembled together to be worth much. Conversely, a presently unified entitlement may be more valuable if it can be split into separate pieces held by different parties. The lecture examined these "lumping" and "slicing" problems (which turn out to be two sides of the same coin), showed how they turn up in both interpersonal and intrapersonal contexts, and offered some tools for addressing them.