Scott J. Shapiro

Scott J. Shapiro is the Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law and Philosophy at Yale Law School and the Co-Director of Yale’s Center for Law and Philosophy. He has been cited extensively for his work on the planning theory of law as well as his contributions to the Hart-Dworkin debate.

Biography

Shapiro earned both his B.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1996) in philosophy from Columbia University and his J.D. from Yale Law School (1990), where he was Senior Editor of The Yale Law Journal. He later received the Gregory Kavka award for best published article in political philosophy in 1998 and 1999 from the American Philosophical Association.

Prior to joining Yale’s faculty in 2008, he taught law and philosophy at the University of Michigan from 2005 to 2008 and before that, was a professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law from 2001 to 2005. He was also a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and worked as a volunteer attorney at the Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services in New York City.

At Yale where he holds a joint appointment with the Philosophy Department, Shapiro teaches courses on jurisprudence, international law, constitutional law and theory, family law, criminal law, philosophy of action, and the theory of authority and rationality. He is the author of Legality (2011) and editor (with Jules Coleman) of The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law (2002), latter of which was translated to Chinese in 2007.

Planning Theory of Law

Shapiro’s planning theory of law is based on the premise that fundamental legal rules are both created and maintained by a group’s ability to develop and adopt plans. In his discussions of non-legal determinants of law, he addresses the response advanced by legal positivists and natural lawyers. He contends that neither social facts nor moral considerations alone produce a complete account of legal rules and legal interpretation. Rather, he identifies legal activity as a form of planning activity as plans are the central rules of legal systems:

“These rules structure legal activity so that participants can work together and thereby achieve the political objectives of the practice. As a result, whether someone has legal authority in a particular system depends on whether the officials in that system plan to defer to this person in the relevant circumstances and no whether they morally ought to do so.”

Works

• The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law, 2002, Oxford University Press

• Legality, 2011, Harvard University Press

• “The ‘Hart-Dworkin’ Debate: A Short Guide for the Perplexed,” Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series: Working Paper No. 77, 2007, University of Michigan Law School

External Links

• Scott J. Shapiro’s Faculty Profile at Yale Law School