Leslie Green (philosopher)

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Leslie Green is a leading scholar in the analytic philosophy of law, or jurisprudence as it is often called by academic lawyers.

Born in Bridge of Weir, Scotland, and educated at Queen's University, Canada, and at Nuffield College, Oxford, he completed his dissertation—which culminated in a book, The Authority of the State—under professors Charles Taylor and later Joseph Raz. Green teaches at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, and is a Regular Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at Austin law school. He has also taught at Queen's University (Canada), Lincoln College, Oxford, and at Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been a visiting fellow at Columbia University's Center for Law and Philosophy, and will be a Hauser Global Faculty member at New York University School of Law in the Fall of 2006.

He writes on political philosophy, legal obligation and authority, legal reasoning, as well as on moral and legal issues surrounding sexuality. His work defends surprising combinations of ideas. He is a defender of legal positivism who thinks that there are necessary connections between law and morality. He denies that there is a general duty to obey the law, but thinks reasonably just legal systems are morally valuable and are to be defended where they exist and established where they do not. He is a liberal in sexual ethics who maintains that sexual objectification is sometimes a good thing.

In June 2006, Green was elected to the Professorship of Philosophy of Law at Oxford University, which also includes a Fellowship at Balliol College. The Professorship, a new statutory chair, was created upon the retirement of Joseph Raz from his personal Chair, also at Balliol. It is one of just two statutory professorships in jurisprudence at Oxford, the other being held by John Gardner.