Legal Commentary

Well, that's not quite the topic under investigation, but some number of the Friends of Prawfs will be hosting or participating in a fascinating symposium at Brooklyn Law School on Friday Sept. 26th on the topic of  Is Morality Universal and Should the Law Care?

I've posted the description and agenda after the jump. Sadly, I'll have to miss it. That day I'll be presenting this new paper -- How Should Punitive Damages Work? -- at the Canadian Law and Econ Association annual conference in Toronto. I'll have more to say about that article in a separate post, but one should never miss an opportunity to invite others to be among the first 1000 downloaders of a new article...  In any event, I look forward to reading the remarks of the Brooklyn conference attendees; I suspect that they will appear in the Brooklyn Law Review, which is a co-host for the event.

Btw, I found out about the conference from the LSN Professional Announcements email. But folks, why spend big bucks on SSRN when you can run these paid announcements for CFPs, jobs, conferences, etc. on Prawfs??  We're here for you too :-)

     Discoveries about the ways our minds work lead us to ask 
     important questions that concern the law. Among them are: 
     Do we have a universal set of moral principles, which 
     suggests that people should be held responsible for 
     complying with them regardless of articulated legal 
     standards? Is there a universal set of justifications and 
     excuses for otherwise bad conduct? Do we have a strong 
     impulse toward retribution, and if so, should the law 
     reinforce or temper that impulse? Are there universal 
     principles of social cognition, and if so, how should the 
     law respond to their existence? Can we tie any such 
     patterns to evolution? Are we configured to blame more 
     easily than to praise, and how does the law reflect this 
     asymmetry?
     
     Participants in the symposium include experts in law, 
     psychology, linguistics, philosophy, history, and 
     psychiatry. Their presence at the symposium will highlight 
     both the occasional consensus and more frequent controversy 
     about these most important questions. The symposium is co-
     sponsored by the Center for the Study of Law, Language and 
     Cognition and the Brooklyn Law Review.
     
     
     AGENDA:
     
     8:15 am       Registration, Continental Breakfast, Opening 
     Remarks
     
     9:00 am       Moral Universals vs. Adaptive Flexibility
     
     Panelists:
     John M. Darley, Dept. of Psychology, Princeton University
     Adam J. Kolber, Univ. of San Diego School of Law; Brooklyn 
     Law School
     Bailey H. Kuklin, Brooklyn Law School
     
     Discussant:
     Laurence R. Tancredi, New York University School of 
     Medicine
     
     Moderator:
     Miriam H. Baer, Brooklyn Law School
     
     11:15 am      Break
     
     11:30 am      Moral Attribution: Positive and Negative
     
     Panelists:
     Susanna L. Blumenthal, University of Minnesota Law School
     Lawrence M. Solan, Brooklyn Law School
     
     Discussant:
     Joshua Knobe, Dept. of Philosophy, University of North 
     Carolina-Chapel Hill
     
     Moderator:
     Jason Mazzone, Brooklyn Law School
     
     1:00 pm       Luncheon
     
     2:00 pm       How Universal are Moral Universals?
     
     Panelists:
     Paul Bloom, Dept. of Psychology, Yale University
     Ray Jackendoff, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University
     John Mikhail, Georgetown University Law Center
     
     Moderator/Discussant:
     Michael Cahill, Brooklyn Law School
     
     4:45-5:00 pm  General Discussion
     
     Moderator:  
     Kevin M. Carlsmith, Dept. of Psychology, Colgate University
     
     
     REGISTRATION:
     
     RSVP:     
                    http://www.brooklaw.edu/rsvp
     
     
     Brooklyn Law School
     250 Joralemon Street
     Brooklyn, New York