Brian Leiter

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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 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.

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 chairholder in the history of the law school at Texas. He has also been a visiting professor at Yale Law School and University College London, and is a visiting professor at University of Chicago Law School in fall 2006. He edits the journal Legal Theory and is also editor of the Routledge Philosophers, a new series of introductions to major philosophers.

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, forthcoming in 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 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).

Leiter is also known for his popular, influential, and controversial rankings of law schools, and for the Philosophical Gourmet Report, which ranks graduate programs in Philosophy. In recent years, Leiter has also become a prominent blogger on topics including philosophy, rankings and politics. His polemical political blogging features attacks on proponents of Intelligent Design, the Anglo-American 2003 Invasion of Iraq, Bush economic and social policies, and various conservative figures.

[edit] External links

Official sites

Brian Leiter. Profile at the University of Texas Law School website.
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.
Leiter's Law School Rankings. Leiter's ranking of Law schools.
The Philosophical Gourmet Report. See separate article: Philosophical Gourmet Report