2022, Private Orderings and Public Justice

The 2022 Seminar in Private Law will devote itself to examining questions about the relationship between private orderings and public justice. We hope to explore how private law and the private arrangements that it enables and facilitates — e.g., through contracts, property rights, or corporate law — relate to (public) concerns with justice. This includes examining how public justice goals may be promoted or hampered through private arrangements, questioning the limits of private ordering, and reflecting critically on the interaction between private and public institutions more broadly. 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, sociology, history, and philosophy.

Spring 2022 Schedule