
Intensive Seminar
Themes in Natural Law Jurisprudence
October 3–4 | 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. Interested students should submit their CV to patrick.hough@elminstitute.org.
Seminar Schedule
Thursday, Oct 2
6.00-8.00 | Opening dinner and reception
Friday, Oct 3
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, Oct 4
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 a professor at Notre Dame Law School. His work in constitutional law and theory has appeared in venues including the Columbia Law Review, the New York University Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Harvard Law Review Forum, and the Yale Law Journal Forum. He is also editor of a First Amendment casebook formerly edited by Fred Schauer, and coeditor with Mike Dorf of a constitutional law casebook formerly coedited by Schauer and Dick Fallon. His scholarship has been cited by Justices and judges and featured in venues including the New York Times.
Before joining Notre Dame, he practiced appellate and complex civil litigation at Jones Day in Washington, D.C., having earlier served as a law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Thomas Griffith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Now completing his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton, Girgis earned his J.D. at Yale Law School, a master’s (B.Phil.) in philosophy from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and a bachelor’s in philosophy from Princeton, summa cum laude.