The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Podcast

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.

"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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

This lecture defends three main theses: (I) that all decisions about the degree of ambition for emissions mitigation are unavoidably also decisions about how to distribute risk across generations and, more specifically, (II) that the less ambitious the mitigation is, the more inherently objectionable the resulting inter-generational risk distribution is, and (III) that mitigation that is so lacking in ambition that it bequeaths risks that remain unlimited, when the risks could have been limited without inordinate sacrifice, is especially objectionable and constitutes a failure to seize a glorious historic opportunity. This Dewey Lecture in Law and Philosophy was presented on November 8, 2017, by Henry Shue, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for International Studies, and Merton College, University of Oxford.

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.

With commentary by Professor Daniel Hemel Professor Nielson is a law professor at Brigham Young University and teaches/writes in the areas of administrative law, civil procedure, federal courts, and antitrust. Before joining the faculty, Professor Nielson was a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He also has served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Nielson received his J.D. from Harvard Law School. Following graduation, he was awarded a Harvard Law School Post-Graduate Research Fellowship. Professor Nielson also received an LL.M from the University of Cambridge, where he focused his studies on the institutions that regulate global competition and commerce. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in economics and political science. Daniel Hemel's research focuses on taxation, risk regulation, and innovation law. His current projects examine the effect of tax expenditures on inequality; the role of cost-benefit analysis in tax administration; and the use of tax incentives to encourage knowledge production. As an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School, he teaches tax, administrative law, and torts. Daniel graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and received an M.Phil with distinction from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. Prior to his appointment, he was a law clerk to Associate Justice Elena Kagan on the U.S. Supreme Court. He also clerked for Judge Michael Boudin on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Judge Sri Srinivasan on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and served as visiting counsel at the Joint Committee on Taxation. Presented on April 26, 2017, by the Federalist Society.

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.

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.

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.

Professor Lash graduated from Yale Law School and served as law clerk to the Honorable Robert R. Beezer of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Afterward, he joined the University of Illinois from Loyola Law School Los Angeles, where he served as the James P. Bradley Chair of Constitutional Law. His recent book, The Lost History of the Ninth Amendment, was published in 2009 by Oxford University Press. Cambridge University Press will publish his second book, American Privileges and Immunities: Federalism, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Rights of American Citizenship. Alan Gura's practice focuses primarily on constitutional law. Prior to founding Gura & Possessky, PLLC, Mr. Gura began his career by serving as a law clerk to the Honorable Terrence W. Boyle, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Subsequently, as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, Mr. Gura defended the State of California and its employees from all manner of lawsuits, in state and federal courts, at trial and on appeal. Thereafter, Mr. Gura entered the private practice of law with the Washington, D.C. offices of Sidley & Austin. In February 2000, he left the firm to serve for a year as Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Criminal Justice Oversight. Presented by the Federalist Society on January 25, 2017.

"A Different Kind of Supreme Court? Empirical Study of the Supreme Court of India" Part of Chicago's intellectual tradition is a willingness to take nothing for granted. Comparative study of legal institutions often reveals to us exactly how much we take for granted in the design of our legal institutions. Take the US Supreme Court: Why nine justices? Why does the president, and not the current justices, appoint new justices? Why do they sit en banc in every case, rather than sitting in panels of, say, two justices? Why do they decide 80 cases per year--why not 800, or 8,000? Why do the justices wait for cases raising important issues, rather than just filing their own cases? In this talk, I'll describe current empirical work on the Supreme Court of India, considered by many to be the most powerful court in the world. I'll present data on how the Court operates, which cases it decides, and how it decides them. This leads to two lines of inquiry: First, what does an apex court so radically unlike our own teach us about the possibilities for institutional design for courts? And second, how can empirical study of one court (such as the Supreme Court of India) inform our understanding of judicial behavior in very different courts (such as our own)? William H. J. Hubbard is Professor of Law and Ronald H. Coase Teaching Scholar. This Chicago's Best Ideas talk was presented on January 17, 2017.

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.

Jim Zirin graduated from Princeton University with honors and received his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School where he was an editor of the Michigan Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. For three years, he was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and served in the criminal division under Robert M. Morgenthau. 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. Presented on November 28, 2016, by the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society.

With commentary by Professor William Hubbard. Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, as well as Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is a leading authority on freedom of speech and religion, the relation of individual rights to government structure, originalism, and various other aspects of constitutional history and constitutional law. He is author of numerous articles and co-author of two casebooks: The Constitution of the United States (Foundation Press) and Religion and the Constitution (Aspen). He is co-editor of Christian Perspectives on Legal Thought (Yale Univ. Press). Since 1996, he has been a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Presented on November 15, 2016, by the Christian Legal Society, the St. Thomas More Society, and the Federalist Society.

In this First Monday event, Law School faculty discuss their insight and opinions on upcoming United States Supreme Court cases and the issues currently facing the Court. Featuring: Anthony J. Casey, '02, Professor of Law and Mark Claster Mamolen Teaching Scholar Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Assistant Professor of Law David Strauss, the Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law. Moderated by Sarah M. Konsky, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Jenner & Block Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic. Introduced by Dean Thomas J. Miles.

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.

Today, as our capacity to prolong life increases, people dispute whether indefinite prolongation could possibly be good. A leading bioethicist, Ezekiel Emanuel (brother of Rahm) has written that we should all want to die at 75! I'll approach this question by drawing on ancient Greek arguments about why immortal life is undesirable -- arguments that I find fatally flawed. I then turn to two more recent philosophers who try to reconcile us to finite and reasonably short mortal lives: "Younger Martha" (i.e. me in 1994), and my teacher Bernard Williams, who wrote about the "tedium of immortality." I find those consolatory arguments flawed too. But a better argument is found in the Roman philosopher Lucretius, and it applies to indefinite prolongation as well as to outright immortality. Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics. Presented on April 5, 2016, at the University of Chicago Law School.

Michael Kirby, "North Korea and our Dilemma: How to Secure Accountability for Crimes Against Humanity by a Recalcitrant Nuclear State?" Michael Kirby was a Justice of the High Court of Australia (1996-2009), the nation's highest appellate and constitutional Court. In 2013-14 he served as chair of the Commission of Inquiry of the UN Human Rights Council investigating crimes against humanity in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). The commission found grave and long-standing crimes against humanity and called for referral of its report to the Security Council of the United Nations. That body has the power to refer matters to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. He warned the Supreme Leader of North Korea that, under international law, he was potentially personally accountable for failing to use his power to prevent and redress such crimes. Although the commission's report was duly sent to the Security Council by the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly, so far the Security Council as failed to enliven the jurisdiction of the ICC. In recent weeks, the Council has imposed new and stronger sanctions against North Korea following the conduct of a fourth nuclear weapons test and missile tests. The report of the commission has been widely praised for its powerful description of great wrongs. But how do we move beyond another UN report into effective subjection of this dangerous state and its leadership to compulsory accountability before an international tribunal responding to the deep concerns of humanity? The speaker will outline our dilemma. He will also answer questions and suggest possible future developments. The Ulysses and Marguerite Schwartz Memorial Lectureship at the University of Chicago Law School is held by a distinguished lawyer or teacher whose experience is in the academic field or practice of public service. Presented on March 29, 2016, at the University of Chicago Law School.

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.

Recent efforts by opponents of same-sex marriage and reproductive rights to reorient their agenda around religious freedom have sparked an explosion of scholarship on religious claims for exemption from generally applicable laws. Professor Weinrib will discuss an early antecedent of this strategy: the campaign by the National Civil Liberties Bureau, the organizational precursor of the ACLU, to secure exemptions from military service for conscientious objectors during the First World War. The conception of liberty of conscience that the ACLU's founders advanced, which they linked to an “Anglo-Saxon tradition” of individual rights, clashed with Progressive understandings of democratic citizenship and failed to gain broad-based traction. Civil liberties advocates consequently reframed their wartime work in terms that foregrounded democratic dissent rather than individual autonomy. By the Second World War, the new emphasis on expressive freedom had worked its way into American constitutional law. Even then, however, most Americans rejected a court-centered and constitutional right to exemption from generally applicable laws. Laura Weinrib is Assistant Professor of Law and Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School. This Chicago's Best Ideas talked was recorded on February 17, 2016.

Dhammika Dharmapala is the Julius Kreeger Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. The 2016 Coase Lecture was presented on February 16, 2016.

Chief Judge Diane Wood presents "Making Your Voice Heard" and speaks on issues related to women's professional development and the difficulties they face. Judge Diane Wood is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a senior lecturer here at the Law School. She earned her B.A. in 1971 and J.D. in 1975 from the University of Texas at Austin, and went on to clerk for Judge Irving L. Goldberg of the Fifth Circuit and for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court. After spending time in private practice and in government, she began teaching, first at Georgetown University Law Center, and ultimately at The University of Chicago Law School, where she was the third woman to join the faculty. She was nominated to the Seventh Circuit by President Bill Clinton in 1995, and became Chief Judge on Oct. 1, 2013. She is the second woman to serve on the Seventh Circuit and the first woman to serve as Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit. This program was presented on January 14, 2016, by Law Women's Caucus, and sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Students as part of Diversity Month.

Suppose a court holds in the context of a habeas petition that a constitutional right is not yet “clearly established.” Can we conclude from this that the right does not exist? The answer, of course, is “no”—it would be error to treat this case as having held that there is no such right. Yet in case after case, across multiple areas of law, judges (and their clerks) make precisely these types of “deference mistakes”: they rely on precedent without understanding the standard of review or burden of proof that governed that precedent. That includes the particular mistake described here: courts regularly rely on precedents holding that a constitutional right was not “clearly established” to conclude that the right does not exist. Nor is the problem confined to individual cases. Deference mistakes can propagate over time, leading to systematic shifts in legal doctrine. Jonathan Masur is the 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. Presented on January 12, 2016, as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series.

Keynote address for the University of Chicago Law School Legal Forum Symposium 2015: Policing the Police First published in 1985, the University of Chicago Legal Forum is the Law School's second-oldest journal. The Legal Forum is a student-edited journal that focuses on a single cutting-edge legal issue every year, presenting an authoritative and timely approach to a particular topic. Tracey L. Meares is the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law at Yale Law School Recorded on November 6, 2015. Also see the C-SPAN coverage: http://www.c-span.org/video/?400047-1/discussion-police-reform-public-security

"Standing Up for Marriage Equality: Insights from the Obergefell Supreme Court Arguments" Doug Hallward-Driemeier leads Ropes & Gray's Appellate and Supreme Court practice. He has presented more than 60 appellate arguments, including before the U.S. Supreme Court and every federal circuit court of appeals. In the 2014-2015 Supreme Court Term, he argued two cases, including the landmark Obergefell case. Daniel Hemel's research focuses on taxation, risk regulation, and innovation law. His current projects examine the taxation of risk-based returns; the application of cost-benefit analysis to tax administration; and the role of international law in providing innovation incentives. As an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School, he teaches tax, administrative law, and torts. This event was organized by the Office of the Dean of Students and sponsored by OutLaw. It was recorded on November 4, 2015.

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.

It's birth control's fiftieth birthday! Professor Case will be discussing what Griswold—the landmark case that began the process of invalidating legal prohibitions on the use of birth control—looks like in the aftermath of Hobby Lobby and Obergefell. Mary Anne Case is the Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law and convener of the Workshop on Regulating Family, Sex and Gender. Presented by the Law Students for Reproductive Justice and the American Constitution Society on November 11, 2015.

Panelists: - Don Harmon, JD'95, Illinois State Senator - Dan Johnson, JD'00, Progressive Public Affairs - Blake Sercye, JD'11, Associate, Jenner & Block - Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Assistant Professor of Law Hosted by the University of Chicago Law School's Regional Alumni Committee at Skadden Arps in Chicago. Recorded October 13, 2015.

Lawmakers respond to constituents, seek higher office, have lofty goals, and even learn from their mistakes. But do they actually make the world a better place? In this lecture, the first of this year's Chicago's Best Ideas series, Professor Levmore examines some aspects of lawmaking that do not make their way into the law school curriculum. First, lawmakers may be forward-looking, but they have tools that are backward looking, or retroactive, and this combination can help us understand why some lawmaking is quite durable, while some of it falls apart both physically (like crumbling bridges) and conceptually (like conventional views about sex and marriage). Second, lawmakers might be rewarded when they innovate successfully, but they are penalized harshly for making changes that backfire. This trade-off helps us understand where we do or do not observe experiments and progress, ranging from Uber to health-care. Saul Levmore is the William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of Law. This Chicago's Best Ideas lecture was recorded on October 13, 2015.

James B. Comey, class of 1985, is the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Recorded on October 23, 2015, at the University of Chicago Law School.

Laura Weinrib, Assistant ​Professor ​of ​Law ​and ​Herbert ​and ​Marjorie ​Fried ​Teaching ​Scholar, is a 2003 graduate of Harvard Law School. She completed her PhD in history at Princeton University in 2011. In 2000, she received an AB in literature and an AM in comparative literature from Harvard University. After law school, Weinrib clerked for Judge Thomas L. Ambro of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. From 2009 to 2010, she was a Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in Legal History at the New York University School of Law. Recorded October 5, 2015, as part of the Law School's First Mondays luncheon series.

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.

“Newtonian Law and Economics, Quantum Law and Economics, and the Search for a Theory of Relativity” At this law school, “law and economics” is a mantra. But what is the “economics” in “law and economics”? There is a tendency to see research on cognitive biases and bounded rationality (“behavioral economics”) as challenging or even overturning an approach using models of rational behavior (“neo-classical economics”). With the help of an analogy to physics, I argue that such a view disserves both the enterprise of neo-classical economics and the promise of behavioral economics, and I define present and future challenges for the economic analysis of law. William H. J. Hubbard is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. This talk, the 2015 Coase Lecture in Law and Economics, was recorded on April 14, 2015.

After the Hobby Lobby and Citizens United decisions, a robust public debate has emerged over corporate constitutional rights. Prof. Huq discusses ongoing empirical research about how the Hobby Lobby case has influenced public perceptions not just of those rights, but also of the Court itself. Aziz Z. Huq teaches and conducts research in constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal courts. A 1996 summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he received his law degree from Columbia Law School in 2001. At Columbia, he was awarded the John Ordronaux Prize, the Emil Schlesinger Prize, and the Charles Bathgate Beck Prize. Upon graduating, he clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 2001 to 2002 and then for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States from 2003 to 2004. Recorded on May 5, 2015, as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series.

The notion of reasonable expectations filters in and out of many given areas of law. It is often derided as circular claim in which reasonable expectations are shaped by the law that they are supposed to shape. On the other hand, it is often treated, most notably under the Supreme Court's now pivotal decision in Penn Central Transportation Co v. City of New York, as the linchpin of modern real property law, and has been used as well in other areas, including financial regulation and the law of searches and seizures. Both of these views are incorrect. Reasonable expectations can never be banned from the law, but they must be domesticated, where their primary role is to facilitate cooperation between people who otherwise are unable to coordinate their social behaviors. Richard A. Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Law and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. Epstein started his legal career at the University of Southern California, where he taught from 1968 to 1972. He served as Interim Dean of the Law School from February to June 2001. He is also the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at New York University, and the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Recorded April 22, 2015, as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series.

For over twenty-five years, federal courts of appeals have rebelled against every Supreme Court mandate that weakens the federal sentencing Guidelines. That rebellion has intensified since the Court dealt a blow to the Guidelines a decade ago by making them advisory, rather than mandatory. This ruling dramatically limited the courts of appeals' authority to reverse district court sentences that deviate from the Guidelines. Rather than accepting this limitation on their power, the courts of appeals fought against it by overpolicing sentences that deviated from the Guidelines and underpolicing sentences that fell within the Guidelines. The Supreme Court has responded to these mutinies with stinging reversals that emphasize the district courts' significant discretion and the advisory nature of the Guidelines. This talk discusses these ongoing battles between the courts of appeals and the Supreme Court, including a new revolt the courts of appeals are staging that violates not only Supreme Court precedent, but the federal sentencing statute and the Constitution as well. Because the courts of appeals are unlikely to back down, Professor Siegler calls on the Supreme Court to step in and stop this latest rebellion. Alison Siegler is Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Federal Criminal Justice Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. Recorded on April 13, 2015, as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series.

A Kreisman Housing Breakfast Series event co-sponsored by the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago and the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics Led by University of Chicago environmental lawyer Mark Templeton, an expert panel will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different public and private approaches for addressing the impacts of climate change on infrastructure and housing. Featuring panelists: - Henry Henderson, Midwest Director, Natural Resource Defense Council - Bill Abolt, Vice President, AECOM - Omri Ben-Shahar, Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law and Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics In conversation with Mark Templeton, Associate Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic. Recorded on April 21, 2015.

Why does police accountability matter in this context? How does the knowledge that severe abuses—brutality, sexual assault, false arrest, even death—have gone unpunished inform and shape encounters between youth and police? What are the costs and harms of the absence of accountability? How does the lack of accountability affect the relationships between youth and police? How does it impact our effectiveness in addressing crime and violence? How could improved transparency and accountability affect youth/police relations? Cathy Cohen, David and Mary Winton Green Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago Craig Futterman, Clinical Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School Delores Jones-Brown, Professor of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration, John Jay College of Criminal Justice Chris King, Managing Editor, The St. Louis American Moderator: Jamie Kalven, Invisible Institute This panel discussion was recorded at the Youth/Police Conference at the University of Chicago Law School in April 2015.

Regulation can be a significant barrier to innovation, protecting incumbents and making it harder to bring new goods and services to market. Determining the appropriate regulation is all the more difficult when accelerating technology is creating many new opportunities as well as potential dangers. Can the administrative state itself innovate to promote beneficial innovation? Topics to be considered here will be the nature and scope of cost-benefit analysis, the use of experiments to guide regulation and prizes as an alternative to top-down regulation. Prof. William Baude, University of Chicago Law School Mr. Jon Dudas, Senior Associate to the President, University of Arizona and former Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office Mr. Steve Lehotsky, Deputy Chief Counsel for Litigation, U.S. Chamber Litigation Center Prof. Jennifer Nou, University of Chicago Law School Moderator: Hon. Stephen Markman, Michigan Supreme Court This program was presented on February 20, 2015, as part of the 2015 Federalist Society National Student Symposium.