David Luban, “Lawyers, Backsliding Democracies, and the Dual State”

In this week's Democracy Workshop, the Schell Center will be joined by Professor David Luban. 

David Luban is Distinguished University Professor at Georgetown Law, with a joint appointment in Georgetown’s philosophy department. His research interests center on moral and legal responsibility in organizational settings, including law firms, government, and the military. In addition to legal ethics, he writes on international criminal law, national security, and just war theory.

Luban’s newest book is "Powers of Judgment: Hannah Arendt’s Moral and Legal Philosophy" (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2025). Other books include "Lawyers and Justice: An Ethical Study" (Princeton University Press, 1988), "Legal Modernism" (University of Michigan Press, 1994), and "Legal Ethics and Human Dignity" (Cambridge University Press, 2007). His book, "Torture, Power, and Law" (Cambridge University Press, 2014), won the American Publishers Association PROSE Award for professional and scholarly excellence in philosophy. Other books include edited anthologies and casebooks on international criminal law and legal ethics. Along with many scholarly articles, Luban has written for major newspapers, journals of ideas, and the Just Security e-journal, of which he was a founding editor. 

At the Law Center, Luban regularly teaches "American Legal Profession," international criminal law, and seminars on various topics in legal philosophy, human rights, and international criminal law. His most recent seminars are “From Nuremberg to Kyiv: Aggression and Accountability” (2023), “Human Rights, Then and Now” (2024), “Law Under Stress: Lawyers and the Rule of Law” (2025), and “Professional Responsibility of Government Lawyers” (2025). He is assistant director of Georgetown Law’s Center on National Security, and a faculty advisor to the Human Rights Institute. In 2012–13, he was academic co-director of the Center for Transnational Legal Studies (London).

Lunch will be provided.