Symposium on the Work of Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld

Description

The 1.5-day symposium will take place October 14 and 15 and will commemorate the work of the scholar Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld on the centennial of his death. The workshop will convene leading scholars, predominantly specializing in the theory of private law. Hohfeld’s work formed the foundation of the “bundle of sticks” notion of property and substantially impacted the Restatement (First) of Property. His seminal works were produced while he was a professor at Yale Law School from 1913 to 1918. His two best-known articles were published in the Yale Law Journal in 1913 and 1917. The schedule is below. 

RSVP to private.law@yale.edu.

The Hohfeld Symposium is sponsored by the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund.

Friday	Paper	Discussant
9-10:45	Henry Smith & Andrew Gold: “Scaling Up Legal Relations”	Sadie Blanchard
	Ted Sichelman: “Very Tight ‘Bundles of Sticks’: Hohfeld’s Complex Relations”	Andrew Gold
	Chris Newman, "How to Use Hohfeld Without Destroying Property"	Lee Fennell
11:00-12:10	Anna di Robilant: "Continental Influences on Hohfeldian Approach"	Ben McFarlane
	John Schlegel: “Wesley Hohfeld: The Thoroughly Modern Law Professor"	Pierre Schlag
Lunch
1:10-2:20	Scott Brewer & Giovanni Sartor, “Axiomatic Agony: A Logocratic Analysis of Hohfeld's Rules of Legal Contest"	Ted Sichelman
	Shyam Balganesh & Leo Katz: “In rem, In Personam and Conceptual Partitioning"	Michael Moore
2:35-3:45	Andrew Halpin, "Hohfeld and Rules"	Gideon Yaffe
	John Harrison: “Immunity Rules”	Anita Allen
3:55-5:40	Aditi Bagchi: "The Contingent Politics of Legal Formalism"	Guido Calabresi
	John Goldberg & Ben Zipursky: “Hohfeld, Rights, and Realism”	Shyam Balganesh
	Frederick Schauer: “Hohfeld, Holmes, and the Dilemma of Specialized Legal Language”	Daniel Markovits
Hohfeld paper viewing
Saturday
9-10:45	Emily Sherwin, "Law and Equity in Jural Relations"	James Penner
	James Penner, ‘Hohfeld’s Equity’, which will focus primarily on his Michigan Law Review Article ‘The Relation between Equity and Law’.	Henry Smith
	Ben McFarlane: “Hohfeld and the Trust”	Daniel Clarry
11:00-12:45	Joe Singer: “Religious Liberty & Public Accommodations: What Would Hohfeld Say?”	Amy Sepinwall
	Pierre Schlag: “Hohfeld and the Puzzling Persistence of Law-Free Zones"	Jack Balkin
	Heidi Hurd & Michael Moore: "Moral Combat and the Hohfeldian Scheme for Rights"	David Frydrych

 

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Center for the Study of Private Law, Project on the Foundations of Private Law at Harvard Law School, University of Pennsylvania School of Law, and University of San Diego School of Law