The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog

Conference: "Emotion in Context: Exploring the Interaction between Emotions and Legal Institutions"

This past May, then-Visiting Professor of Law Susan Bandes organized a fascinating conference that brought together scholars working in philosophy, neuroscience, neuroeconomics, sociology, psychology, and political science to consider the intersection of legal institutions and human emotion. For example, legal institutions consistently make assumptions about how people individually or collectively respond to new information, assess risks, or decide whom to trust or fear, about what motivates people to forgive or to seek vengeance, or about how to promote or discourage empathy. The conference explored the complex interaction between emotion and social structure to consider both how institutional context affects the experience and expression of emotion, and how emotion norms affect the shape and operation of legal institutions. Included in the proceedings were Chicago faculty members Scott Anderson, Mary Anne Case, Richard Epstein, and Martha Nussbaum. Audio recordings of many of the talks are now available on the conference website.

The conference was sponsored by the University of Chicago Law School, the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research, the DePaul University College of Law and the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School.

Martha Nussbaum on Roger Williams

Over at The New Republic, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor Martha Nussbaum has a review of a new book edited by James Calvin Davis entitled On Religious Liberty: Selections From the Works of Roger Williams. A short excerpt is reproduced below, and you can read the full review here.

Williams's writings have long been virtually unavailable to the general public. Now Harvard University Press has published On Religious Liberty: Selections From the Works of Roger Williams, edited by scholar James Calvin Davis. Davis provides around three hundred pages of Williams's writings, including all-too-brief extracts from the two great works on persecution. He has decided to omit Williams's correspondence--an unfortunate decision, since the letters, though well edited, are as hard for the general reader to obtain as the treatises. Still, Davis has a keen eye for the telling passage, and he arranges the extracts helpfully, adding a lucid introduction. His fine volume will be especially useful for purposes of teaching, and it will sustain us while we await a more complete re-issue of the major works and letters.

Martha Nussbaum: The 2008 Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture

On May 14, Martha Nussbaum presented the 2008 Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture. The Ryerson Lectures grew out of a 1972 bequest to the University by Nora and Edward L. Ryerson, a former Chairman of the Board. The University's faculty selects each Ryerson Lecturer based on a consensus that a particular scholar has made research contributions of lasting significance. Video of Professor Nussbaum's lecture, which was  entitled "Equal Respect for Conscience: The Roots of a Moral and Legal Tradition," is embedded below, and an .mp3 is also available.

Debating Polygamy

What is wrong with polygamy?

Nineteenth-century Americans coupled it with slavery, calling both "the twin relics of barbarism." Today, it is used as a scare image to deter people from approving same-sex marriage, lest it lead down a slippery slope to that horror of horrors.

But what, exactly, is bad about it? Looking at the Texas sect at the Yearning for Zion ranch, so much in the news, will not tell us, because that sect allegedly forced underage girls into marriage. The case then becomes one of child sexual abuse, a crime hardly unknown in the monogamous family, although it gets less splashy publicity when it occurs there. Disturbing things are fun to contemplate when they can be pinned on distant "deviants," but threatening when they occur in families like one's own.

Mormon polygamy of the 19th century was not child abuse. Adult women married by consent, and typically lived in separate dwellings, each visited by the husband in turn. In addition to their theological rationale, Mormons defended the practice with social arguments - in particular that polygamous men would abandon wives or visit prostitutes less frequently. Instead of answering these arguments, however, Americans hastened to vilify Mormon society, publishing semi-pornographic novels that depicted polygamy as a hotbed of incest and child abuse.

Conference: "Torture, Law, and War"

On February 29 and March 1, the Law School hosted an extraordinary conference devoted to the topic “Torture, Law, and War: What are the moral and legal boundaries on the use of coercion in interrogation?” The conference, which was sponsored by the Law and Philosophy Workshop with assistance from the Center for Comparative Constitutionalism, showcased the interdisciplinarity for which a Chicago legal education is renowned. Participants looked at the central question from the perspective of a wide range of fields, from law and public policy to psychology and history. Speakers included scholars from a dozen universities as well as the Law School's own Adam Samaha, Susan Bandes, Richard McAdams, Martha Nussbaum, Geoffrey Stone, Scott Anderson, and Eric Posner.

The conference keynote speaker was Justice Albie Sachs of the Constitutional Court of South Africa (pictured above). His talk, “Four tales of terrorism,” gave a first-hand account of his own torture by South African security forces and his brush with death when they attempted to assassinate him with a car bomb. It also described the principles behind the rejection of torture and capital punishment by the ANC, both before and after coming to power in South Africa. His talk discussed at some length four instances of terrorism, and the responses that courts and political leaders in South Africa made to them. Through these, he argued for the importance of adhering to the rule of law, including a refusal to resort to capital punishment, and also for the possibility of reconciliation with those who have previously used torture and terrorism against oneself and one’s own side in political struggles.

Audio and video of the keynote address, along with the  other panels of the conference, are now available on the conference web page.

Is Sex Special? Martha Nussbaum Replies to Todd Henderson, James Joseph, Valentina Urbanek, Scott Anderson – and William Landes

I am grateful to the many readers who commented on my Spitzer piece. I cannot answer all the points they raise. I shall briefly respond to a group of points about Spitzer, and then turn to the important arguments of Valentina Urbanek and Scott Anderson about the specialness of sex.

Todd Henderson is right to ask me what I think about the financial laws that Spitzer is suspected of having broken. Do I think that if the suspect financial transactions occurred in connection with activities that should never have been illegal, those ancillary transactions themselves should not be deemed legally or morally problematic? I do not hold this view. I think that if there is solid evidence that Spitzer actually broke laws involving the use of campaign money, mail and wire fraud, etc., then he should be held accountable for these violations. However, all the evidence so far (including a comprehensive Associated Press inquiry whose results were published on March 21) suggests that he did not violate these laws. Let's wait and see.

"America's Puritan Streak" - Nussbaum Responds

[Professor Nussbaum submitted the following post by email:]

I am grateful to all those who posted comments on my piece on Eliot Spitzer.  I intend to reply.  Technical difficulties have prevented me from accessing our faculty blog from India, where I currently am (running a conference on Affirmative Action in Higher Education co-sponsored by our law school).  I have now received them by e-mail, and will reply in a few days.  Meanwhile, however, I would like to reflect today on the fascinating comments on my op ed -- over 100 of them -- from readers of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where it was originally published.

The Atlanta comments are a fascinating confirmation of my claims in the Spitzer piece about American puritanism and its misogynistic violence.  A central theme is denunciation of Europe as a godless anti-Christian society that has lost its moral fiber because it tolerates too much female sexual freedom, a "decadent and dying culture."  For this reason, opine the Atlantans, Europe will soon fall to the Muslim invaders.

Martha Nussbaum:"Trading on America's Puritanical Streak"

[This post also appears in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution and is posted here at the request of the author. Prof. Nussbaum's arguments about prostitution made here are developed at greater length in an article entitled "'Whether from Reason or Prejudice'": Taking Money for Bodily Services," 2 Journal of Legal Studies 27 (1998).]

Eliot Spitzer, one of the nation's most gifted and dedicated politicians, was hounded into resignation by a Puritanism and mean-spiritedness that are quintessentially American.   My European colleagues (I write from an academic conference in Belgium) have a hard time understanding what happened, but they know that it is one of those things that could only happen in America, where the topic of sex drives otherwise reasonable people insane.  In Germany and the Netherlands, prostitution is legal and regulated by public health authorities.  A man who did what Spitzer did would have a lot to discuss with his wife and family, but he would have broken no laws, and it would be laughable to accuse him of a betrayal of the public trust.  This is as it should be.  If Spitzer broke any laws, they were bad laws, laws that should never have existed. 

Martha Nussbaum Talks with Akbar Ganji

Chicago Public Radio has partnered with the University of Chicago (among other organizations) in a project called Chicago Amplified. From their website: "Chicago Amplified is a Web-based audio archive filled with diverse lectures, conversations, panel discussions, forums and other educational events sponsored by community organizations and institutions throughout the Chicago region and presented here for audio streaming or download. The goal of this project is to make some of the most interesting and informative public programs taking place throughout our community widely available. Chicago Amplified allows you to listen to these events again, or discover them for the first time."

Among the University's first entries in Chicago Amplified is a conversation with Akbar Ganji and our own Martha Nussbaum. Gangi is Iran's most prominent political dissident and writer of A Republican Manifesto, laying out the basis for a full-fledged democracy in Iran. You can listen here to their conversation, and also visit the site for the University of Chicago's contributions to Chicago Amplified.

Women’s Bodies: Violence, Security, Capabilities - Part VI

Note: This is the sixth and final post in a series, the whole of which is an article by Martha Nussbaum. The article, entitled "Women’s Bodies: Violence, Security, Capabilities," appeared in the Journal of Human Development (Vol. 6, No. 2, July 2005).  Comments are encouraged on parts or on the whole.

Strategies for women’s empowerment

How can we make progress against violence of all the kinds I have described? This is a vast topic, and yet I feel that it can be illuminated by the theoretical approach I have defended. In addition to the obvious strategies of legal reform and better law enforcement, the capabilities approach urges us to think about how we might mobilize one capability to help another. If the analysis of the second section shows that the bad things all hang together, it is also true that supporting one capability helps support others, and sometimes, in an area as culturally contested as this one, the indirect approach through a different capability may be the best. Good women’s organizations typically do not march into a village saying ‘We are here to change gender roles and stop men from beating their wives’. Even when violence is a big part of their agenda, they typically pursue more indirect strategies, giving women greater bargaining power and exit options through economic empowerment.

Note: This is the sixth and final post in a series, the whole of which is an article by Martha Nussbaum. The article, entitled "Women’s Bodies: Violence, Security, Capabilities," appeared in the Journal of Human Development (Vol. 6, No. 2, July 2005).  Comments are encouraged on parts or on the whole.

Strategies for women’s empowerment

How can we make progress against violence of all the kinds I have described? This is a vast topic, and yet I feel that it can be illuminated by the theoretical approach I have defended. In addition to the obvious strategies of legal reform and better law enforcement, the capabilities approach urges us to think about how we might mobilize one capability to help another. If the analysis of the second section shows that the bad things all hang together, it is also true that supporting one capability helps support others, and sometimes, in an area as culturally contested as this one, the indirect approach through a different capability may be the best. Good women’s organizations typically do not march into a village saying ‘We are here to change gender roles and stop men from beating their wives’. Even when violence is a big part of their agenda, they typically pursue more indirect strategies, giving women greater bargaining power and exit options through economic empowerment.