Rights and choice 
(Politics)
16 April 2012
5.30pm - 6.30pm
Venue: Forum 4, Law School, The University of Auckland.
Public lecture by Professor Robert Stevens, University College London (as of August, Herbert Smith, Professor of Private Law at Oxford).
This paper defends the claim that it is characteristic of rights that they protect our ability to choose. This descriptive claim about the law has implications for the rights we have one against another regardless of what the law, here and now, happens to be. This is because our common law both claims to be, and is, a determination of the (moral) rights we have one against another which, absent the law, are underdetermined: “positive law can serve as excellent guides” of the moral position. If these terms are thought helpful, my claim is descriptive and normative, not one of analytical definition.
Professor Robert Stevens joined UCL in July 2007. Previously he had been a lecturer in law at the University of Oxford and a Fellow and Tutor in Law at Lady Margaret Hall where he had taught from 1994. Professor Stevens has taught and lectured widely within the Commonwealth (Australia and Canada) and Continental Europe (Germany, the Netherlands, Spain). He has lectured for the Judicial Studies Board, and holds a consultancy with Clifford Chance. Professor Stevens’ research interests cover a wide range of topics within commercial law, and private law more generally.
Everyone is welcome to attend this Auckland Branch of the Society for Legal and Social Philosophy sponsored event.
