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2020, Private Law and Inequality

The Seminar meets Tuesdays from 12:10 to 1:30. Lunch is served from noon. The 2020 Seminar in Private Law will devote itself to examining questions about the relationship between private law and inequality. We hope to explore how the private law's foundational promise of formal equality fares against the structural inequalities present in our society; how the existing institutions of property, tort and contract contribute to rising inequality; and how private law institutions might be used to remedy inequality. Our ambition is to study the subject from both theoretical and empirical perspectives and to engage champions, as well as critics, of private law. The Seminar will bring together lawyers with scholars from economics, history, anthropology, and philosophy. 

The readings are available by request by emailing private.law@yale.edu

28 JanuaryArthur Ripstein (Toronto Law)
A Wrong Personal to You
11 February  John Witt (Yale Law)
Tort as Private Administration
18 FebruaryJosh Macey (Cornell Law)
The Regulatory Compact
3 MarchLiz Sepper (Texas Law)
Converting Corporate Social Responsibility
17 MarchGerald Torres (Cornell Law)
TBD
24 MarchKhiara Bridges (Berkeley Law)
Family Law of the Poor
31 MarchDaniel Sharfstein (Vanderbilt Law)
Second Skins: Arbitration in New York’s Fur Business and the Americanization of an Immigrant Industry, 1912-1938
7 AprilDaria Rothmayr (USC Gould Law)
Racism Pays
14 AprilAmy Dru Stanley (Chicago History)
Private Wrongs, Human Rights, and the Power of  Commerce:  A Problem of Sex