Brian Leiter

Brian Leiter (born 1963) is an American professor of law and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has been teaching since 1995. Before this he taught for two years in the law school at the University of San Diego, and was also a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Princeton University and both his J.D. and Ph.D. (in philosophy) from the University of Michigan.

In 2008, Leiter will move to the University of Chicago, where he will take up a chair in the Law School.

Leiter holds the Hines H. Baker and Thelma Kelley Baker Chair in Law and also serves as Professor of Philosophy and Founder and Director of the Law and Philosophy Program. He was the youngest chair-holder in the history of the law school at Texas. He has been a visiting professor at Yale Law School, University College London, and University of Chicago Law School. He edited the journal Legal Theory for seven years and is also editor of the Routledge Philosophers, a new series of introductions to major philosophers. He gave the 'Or 'Emet Lecture at Osgoode Hall School of Law at York University, Toronto in 2006, and the Fresco Lectures at the University of Genoa and the Dunbar Lecture in Law and Philosophy at the University of Mississippi in 2008.

Philosophy

Leiter's scholarly writings have been in two main areas: legal philosophy and Continental philosophy. Philosophical naturalism has been an abiding theme in both contexts. In legal philosophy, he has offered a reinterpretation of the American Legal Realists as prescient philosophical naturalists and a general defense of what he calls "naturalized jurisprudence." This work is reflected in his book Naturalizing Jurisprudence: Essays on American Legal Realism and Naturalism in Legal Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2007). In his writing on German philosophy, Leiter defends a reading of Nietzsche as a philosophical naturalist, most notably in Nietzsche on Morality (London: Routledge, 2002). He has also published work on meta-ethics, social epistemology, the law of evidence, and on philosophers such as Marx, Heidegger, and Dworkin.

His other publications include several dozen articles and several edited collections. These include Nietzsche (Oxford Readings in Philosophy, 2001) (with John Richardson), Objectivity in Law and Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), The Future for Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), and Nietzsche and Morality (Oxford University Press, 2007) (with Neil Sinhababu). His characterization of the contemporary philosophical scene as divided between "naturalists" and "quietists" was critiqued by Richard Rorty and is partly the subject of an article in Rorty's final collection of papers. His articles include "Determinacy, Objectivity, and Authority" (University of Pennsylvania Law Review) (co-authored with Jules Coleman), "Rethinking Legal Realism: Toward a Naturalized Jurisprudence" (Texas Law Review), "Nietzsche and the Morality Critics" (Ethics), "Legal Realism and Legal Positivism Reconsidered" (Ethics), "Naturalized Epistemology and the Law of Evidence" (Virginia Law Review) (co-authored with Ronald Allen), and "Beyond the Hart/Dworkin Debate: The Methodology Problem in Jurisprudence" (American Journal of Jurisprudence).

Other projects

Leiter is the editor of the Philosophical Gourmet Report, a noted and controversial ranking of graduate programs in philosophy in the English-speaking world. He has also produced a rankings of U.S. law schools, and was recently retained by Macleans magazine in Canada to produce a ranking of Canadian law schools. Starting in 2003, Leiter also became a blogger on topics including philosophy, rankings and politics. His political blogging featured critiques on proponents of intelligent design, the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, Bush economic and social policies, and various conservative figures. Since 2007, however, his blog has returned to its original focus on mostly academic topics.

Leiter and the Hunter Baker controversy

In 2004, the Harvard Law Review published a review by Lawrence VanDyke, a Harvard Law student, praising a book written by Francis J. Beckwith that defended the teaching of intelligent design in schools. Leiter then wrote a scathing review of VanDyke's review. The National Review Online published a response to Leiter written by Hunter Baker, defending Beckwith and alleging Leiter was "attacking" both a student writer and "academic freedom." Baker's article was republished by the Discovery Institute,.

Leiter revealed that Hunter Baker was Beckwith's teaching assistant when he wrote the defense of Beckwith for the National Review, something both Beckwith and Baker had not disclosed. This prompted Leiter to question the journalistic integrity of Hunter and to describe such tactics as "fraud" and a "right-wing slime and smear job."

External links

Official sites

• Brian Leiter. Profile at the University of Texas Law School website.
• Brian Leiter. Personal homepage.
• The Leiter Reports. Formerly Brian Leiter's solo weblog, currently a group weblog with Leiter among others as posters.
• Leiter's Law School Reports. Leiter's companion blog on Law schools.
• Brian Leiter's Nietzsche Blog.
• Brian Leiter's Legal Philosophy Blog.
• Leiter's Law School Rankings. Leiter's ranking of Law schools.
• The Philosophical Gourmet Report. See separate article: Philosophical Gourmet Report

Online publications

• Social Science Research Networks. Includes several recent papers.
• Naturalism in Legal Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Publications edited

• Legal Theory Journal edited by Larry Alexander, Jules Coleman, and Leiter.
• Routledge Philosophers Book series edited by Leiter.

Media appearances

• Radio interview on Philosophy Talk