Stephen Perry, best-known for seminal work on the philosophical foundations of tort law and for making the "methodology" of jurisprudence a lively topic of contemporary debate, is moving from New York University School of Law back to the University of Pennsylvania Law School, after less than four years. He had moved to Penn from the law faculty at McGill University in the mid-1990s.
This is a big coup for Penn, which had in recent years tended to lose head-to-head competitions for faculty with NYU. Yet in the last few years, Penn has also retained faculty in the face of offers from Columbia (Edward Rock [corporate law]) and Virginia (Jason Johnston [law & economics, environmental law]), as well as recruiting faculty laterally from Berkeley (Claire Finkelstein [criminal law, law & philosophy]), Georgetown (Anita Allen [privacy, civil rights, law & philosophy]), Northwestern (Paul Robinson [criminal law]), and Virginia (Chris Sanchirico [evidence, law & economics] and Amy Wax [family law, law & economics]).
Perry's move will certainly restore Penn's competitiveness with the top handful of programs for law and philosophy, though NYU will still retain a strong presence in that area (Liam Murphy is full-time in the area at NYU; other faculty--e.g., Lewis Kornhauser, David Richards--have interests in law and philosophy, among other areas; and Ronald Dworkin and Thomas Nagel still do some teaching, though all reports confirm that students would be ill-advised to go to NYU expecting to do intensive work with either of them).
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