Intensive Seminar

Themes in Natural Law Jurisprudence

April 13-15 | Elm Library

Recent debates in American jurisprudence have returned fundamental questions regarding moral reasoning and the positive law to contemporary legal and political discourse. This intensive seminar for law students will reconsider the nature of moral reasoning in the natural law tradition, competing theories of Constitutional interpretation, and the shape of the moral claims associated with common good accounts of human society.

The seminar is open to Yale Law Students, and is capped at 14 participants. PhD students in political theory, philosophy, and religious studies will be considered on a case by case basis. To apply, please submit your CV to patrick.hough@elminstitute.org. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis.

Seminar Schedule

Thursday, April 13
6.00-8.00 Opening dinner and reception

Friday, April 14
9.00-9.30 Breakfast
9.30-10.00 Welcome and Introductions
10.30-10.45 Break
10.45-12.15 Natural Law Theories
12.15-1.30 Lunch
1.30-3.00 An Account of Positive Law
3.00-3.15 Break
3.15-4.30 Current Debates
4.30-6.00 Break
6.00-8.00 Dinner @ Union League Café

Saturday, April 15
9.00-9.30 Breakfast
9.30-10.45 Natural Law and American Constitutionalism
10.45-11.00 Break
11.00-12.00 Concluding Thoughts
12.00-1.00 Lunch

Sherif Girgis is Associate Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School. His work at the intersection of philosophy and law—including criminal law, constitutional law, and jurisprudence—has appeared in academic and popular venues including the Virginia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the American Journal of Jurisprudence, the Cambridge Companion to Philosophy of Law, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

Prior to joining Notre Dame, he practiced appellate and complex civil litigation at Jones Day in Washington, D.C., having previously served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, Jr., of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Thomas B. Griffith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Now completing his PhD in philosophy at Princeton, Girgis earned his JD at Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Felix S. Cohen Prize for best paper in legal philosophy. He earned a master’s degree (BPhil) in philosophy from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and a bachelor’s in philosophy from Princeton, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude.