Hybrid | Circumstances of Law

Speaker: Grégoire Webber, Professor of Law and Philosophy (Queen's University, Canada)

Chair: George Letsas, Professor of Philosophy of Law (UCL Laws)

Justice derives its origin, Hume tells us, from the confined generosity of persons and the scanty provision nature has made for our wants. Expanding our understanding of these facts and their relationship to justice, Rawls envisioned these “circumstances of justice” as those conditions under which social cooperation is both possible and necessary. This idea of circumstances has animated others in exploring the relationship between conditions and concepts, including Waldron’s account of the circumstances of politics. The questions I explore all relate to an underdeveloped idea in the philosophy of law: the circumstances of law. Is there a parallel relationship between conditions for and the concept of law? Does reflection on the conditions for law give us reason to favour one or another conception of law? In turn, do different conceptions of law highlight different conditions for law's possibility and necessity? And do we best understand some lasting contributions to jurisprudence, such as HLA Hart's account of the shift from a pre-legal to a legal society, as themselves participating in the idea of law's circumstances?

Grégoire Webber is Professor of Law and Philosophy at Queen's University. He holds visiting appointments at the London School of Economics and the Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas. Before joining Queen's as Canada Research Chair in Public Law and Philosophy of Law (2014-2024), he was at the LSE Law School. His areas of research are human rights, public law, and jurisprudence.

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