If you've studied philosophy at the undergraduate or graduate level, and are thinking about law school, I would like to urge you to consider the University of Chicago Law School. The Law School trails only Yale in per capita placement in law teaching, and graduates are also hugely successful in the private firm market, and in clerkships. Although we have a relatively small faculty (38 full-time academic faculty), we have two philosophers full-time in the Law School (myself and Martha Nussbaum), and a large number of colleagues with philosophical interests of various kinds (including William Baude, Aziz Huq, Richard McAdams, David Strauss, and David Weisbach, among others). We also have a steady stream of visiting faculty with philosophy training, including in recent years John Tasioulas (King's College, London), Robert Mark Simpson (University College London), Ryan Doerfler (Penn), Leslie Green (Oxford), and Alon Harel (Hebrew U), among many others. We also host an annual Law & Philosophy Fellow; past fellows include Amanda Greene (now at University College London), Adam Hosein (now at Northeastern University), Nicolas Delon (now at New College, Florida), Sarah Conly (Bowdoin College), and Ben Laurence (now teaching in philosophy and human rights here at Chicago), among others.
Each year, we offer a Law & Philosophy Workshop, on a designated theme, which 2L and 3L students (as well as PhD students) may take for credit. This year, I'm running the Workshop (with Nethanel Lipshitz, our Law & Philosophy Fellow) on the theme, "Enlightenment Liberalism and Its Critics, Left and Right"; outside speakers this year include Jeremy Waldron, David Brink, and Allen Wood, among others. Prior themes have included "Life and Death" (Martha Nussbaum), "Freedom and Responsibility" (me), "Legal and Philosophical Issues about Race" (Nussbaum), and "Free Speech and Its Critics" (me). Speakers have included Gary Watson, Derk Pereboom, Hanna Pickard, Seana Shiffrin, Jeff McMahan, Dan Brock, Derrick Darby, Charles Mills, Joshua Cohen, Pamela Hieryonimi, and Mary Kate McGowan, among many others.
The Law School also sponsors the annual Dewey Lecture in Law & Philosophy, which in the last few years has brought Philip Pettit, Elizabeth Anderson, and Axel Honneth to the Law School; upcoming Dewey Lecturers are Steven Lukes and Seyla Benhabib.
We also have regular offerings in the Law School in jurisprudence, feminist philosophy, political philosophy and other areas. Martha Nussbaum and I each teach a Spring course open to 1L students (as well as upper-level students): I always offer the basic "Jurisprudence" class, while Martha usually teaches either "Feminist Philosophy" or "Emotions, Reason, and the Law." Martha and I also offer seminars each year that are open to JD students, ranging over topics from "Hellenstic Ethics" to "Bernard Williams," to "Freedom and Responsibility, Contemporary and Historical," to "Global Inequality: Philosophical and Economic Perspectives." In a typical year, I usually supervise a couple of independent study projects related to philosophical topics as well.
Of all the law schools in the U.S., the Chicago experience is also probably most like that of a graduate program in a PhD field, in terms of the intellectual engagement of both faculty and students. We've also been very successful at recruiting students with philosophy backgrounds, so you will have many like-minded peers. This year, more than 15% of the 1L class either majored in philosophy or (in three cases) has a graduate degree in the field. I doubt the percentage of philosophy students in law school is higher anywhere in the country.
Chicago currently has substantial merit aid to offer to very strong students (the best-known are the Rubenstein Scholarships, but there are other sources of aid, including for students interested in a JD/PhD). Philosophy students, both those with undergraduate majors and those with advanced degrees, have been very successful in getting this aid, and have performed very well at the Law School; as a result philosophy students receive favorable consideration here. Excellent numerical credentials are very important, of course, but even within that pool, applicants with philosophy backgrounds stand out. Students with philosophy backgrounds have recently turned down Yale, Harvard, and other peer law schools to come to Chicago.
Recent Comments