The Seminar meets Tuesdays from 12:10 to 1:30. Lunch is served from noon. The 2020 Seminar in Private Law will devote itself to examining questions about the relationship between private law and inequality. We hope to explore how the private law's foundational promise of formal equality fares against the structural inequalities present in our society; how the existing institutions of property, tort and contract contribute to rising inequality; and how private law institutions might be used to remedy inequality. Our ambition is to study the subject from both theoretical and empirical perspectives and to engage champions, as well as critics, of private law. The Seminar will bring together lawyers with scholars from economics, history, anthropology, and philosophy.
The readings are available by request by emailing private.law@yale.edu
| 28 January | Arthur Ripstein (Toronto Law) A Wrong Personal to You |
| 11 February | John Witt (Yale Law) Tort as Private Administration |
| 18 February | Josh Macey (Cornell Law) The Regulatory Compact |
| 3 March | Liz Sepper (Texas Law) Converting Corporate Social Responsibility |
| 17 March | Gerald Torres (Cornell Law) TBD |
| 24 March | Khiara Bridges (Berkeley Law) Family Law of the Poor |
| 31 March | Daniel Sharfstein (Vanderbilt Law) Second Skins: Arbitration in New York’s Fur Business and the Americanization of an Immigrant Industry, 1912-1938 |
| 7 April | Daria Rothmayr (USC Gould Law) Racism Pays |
| 14 April | Amy Dru Stanley (Chicago History) Private Wrongs, Human Rights, and the Power of Commerce: A Problem of Sex |