My work in the philosophy of law has largely concerned four topics:

1) the writings of Hans Kelsen,

2) the (general) irrelevance of the philosophy of language for the philosophy of law (or what I call “Dworkin’s Fallacy”),

3) American legal realism, and

4) the intersection between analytic philosophy of law and private international law (or, as it is called in common law countries, the conflict of laws.

But I have become more interested in foundational issues in positivist philosophy of law.

A video of a response I gave to paper on Raz can be found here.

I have also posted reviews of articles in the philosophy of law on Jotwell, including:

Mark McBride, Keeping Hohfeld Simple, 43 Law and Philosophy 451 (2024).

Fernanda Pirie, Beyond Pluralism: A Descriptive Approach to Non-State Law, 14 Jurisprudence 1 (2023).

Robert Mullins, Legal Positivism and Deontic Detachment, 31 Ratio Juris 4 (2018).

Stephen Finlay & David Plunkett, Quasi-Expressivism about Statements of Law: A Hartian Theory, in 3 Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law 49 (John Gardner, Leslie Green & Brian Leiter eds., 2018).

Christopher M. Newman, Hohfeld and the Theory of In Rem Rights: An Attempted Mediation in The Legacy of Wesley Hohfeld (forthcoming 2018)

Timothy Endicott, Comity among Authorities, 68 Current Legal Problems 1 (2015).

Scott Hershovitz, The End of Jurisprudence, 124 Yale L.J. 1160 (2015)

Ronald Dworkin, A New Philosophy for International Law, 41 Phil. & Pub. Aff. 2 (2013)

Karl N. Llewellyn, The Theory of Rules, edited and with an introduction by Frederick Schauer (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2011)

Caleb Nelson, A Critical Guide to Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 54 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. (forthcoming 2013) 

Jeffrey Brand-Ballard, Innocents Lost: Proportional Sentencing and the Paradox of Collateral Damage, 15 Legal Theory 67 (2009)

Julie Dickson, Is the Rule of Recognition Really a Conventional Rule?, 27 Oxford J. Legal Stud. 373 (2007)

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