Legal Theory
Georgetown Law has a long tradition of scholarship and teaching in jurisprudence and legal theory, and many faculty work in the area.
Many Georgetown Law faculty write in the areas critical legal theory, critical race studies, feminism, and gender studies. Though there are differences among them, these approaches generally examine the way that law works to reinforce existing distribution of power and wealth in society. First-year students interested in such approaches can apply to participate for Curriculum B, the alternative first-year curriculum.
Students interested in these approaches may consider working on the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law or on the Georgetown Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives.
Georgetown Law also has a large number of faculty who write on the theory of legal interpretation. The Georgetown Center for the Constitution focuses on methods of constitutional interpretation, with a special emphasis on originalism. But faculty expertise in this area is not limited to questions of constitutional interpretation. Georgetown Law faculty have written leading articles on statutory interpretation, the interpretation of administrative regulations, contract interpretation, and the role of interpretation in the law of fraud and false advertising.
A third area of special faculty expertise is moral and political theory. Georgetown Law faculty have written leading works on moral cognition, on legal ethics, on libertarianism, on the application of virtue ethics to jurisprudence, on just war theory, and on the moral foundations of contract and tort law. Students interested in ethical issues can work on the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics.
Every year faculty members organize, in cooperation with the Georgetown Philosophy Department, a semester-long Law and Philosophy Seminar, which is open to both law and graduate philosophy students. Each year organizers invite outside speakers to present works in progress on a general topic. Recent topics have included “Responsibility, Liability, Holding to Account,” “Bodies, Gender, Identity,” “The Analytic Turn in Jurisprudence” and “Promises and other Relationship-Based Obligations.”