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³§±è±ð²¹°ì±ð°ù:Ìý (Princeton University)

°äï»Ïز¹¾±°ù: The Right Hon Lady Rose of Colmworth (Justice of the Supreme Court)

About the lecture

H.L.A. Hart’s genealogical account of the emergence of law lays little stress on its promulgation, and even less on any role for writing or any other particular technology of writing. Yet if we consider the emergence of ancient Greek laws, especially as the classical Greeks themselves understood that emergence, we find the questions of promulgation and writing to have been repeatedly highlighted. These questions were especially associated with the attributions made by classical Greeks to the figures of the great lawgivers, some of whom certainly existed (Solon of Athens), others of whom may be apocryphal (Lycurgus of Sparta). I argue that these lawgivers were figures in whom the question of promulgation and its best means could be linked to the ethical purpose of law in educating citizens. Indeed, each singular lawgiver was attributed with a particular telos or purpose unifying the body of laws that they promulgated. By taking ancient Greek history as a case study for the emergence of law, and considering the role putatively played by lawgivers (as understood by classical Greeks themselves), we can reconsider the approach of modern legal theory to the both promulgation and ethical purpose.

About the speaker

Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University, and also holds a non-teaching appointment as the Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College in London. Her teaching in ancient Greek and Roman political thought at Princeton is cross-listed with Classics, Hellenic Studies, and Philosophy, and has been recognized with the university-wide Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award and the Stanley J. Kelley Teaching Award of the Princeton Department of Politics.Ìý External honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of classics as well as fellowships and visiting professorships at Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, the American Academy in Rome, and the École Normale Supérieure. Professor Lane completed an MPhil and PhD in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and then taught at Cambridge for fifteen years before moving to Princeton in 2009. Her most recent book, published in 2023 by Princeton University Press, is titledÌýOf Rule and Office: Plato's Ideas of the Political, and she will be drawing on it as part of this lecture.Ìý

About Current Legal Problems

The Current Legal Problems (CLP) lecture series and annual volume was established over fifty five years ago at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and is recognised as a major reference point for legal scholarship.

Book your place

You can attend this event in-person at »Ê¼Ò»ªÈË Faculty of Laws (Bentham House,Ìý4-8 Endsleigh Gardens,ÌýLondonÌýWC1H 0EG) or alternatively you can join via a live stream.

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