Law and Philosophy have always intersected and a Dutch TV station came to campus in January to do a documentary featuring our faculty and students discussing the human and ethical issues emerging from current economic crisis. For the most part, what has happened and continues to happen in the financial markets is legal but is the outcome fair? The Dutch TV station felt it would be interesting to explore this issue from the University of Chicago as it is the academic community where both economist Milton Friedman, staunch promoter of free market capitalism, and President Barack Obama taught.
About ten of our law students will explore new ways and solutions to "repair" any possible injustice caused by the current financial crisis. They will do this by taking a moral perspective rather than going down the more conventional road of financial and corporate legislation. The sessions are hosted by philosopher and Law School professor Martha Nussbaum and the students will collect evidence and advice from other professors from the University of Chicago including Douglas Baird, David Weisbach, Brian Leiter, Eric Posner and Todd Henderson. Law Students featured are Pier Petersen, Brett Reynolds, Katy Welter, Eric Gyasi, Gretchen Helfrich, Alex Kolod, Chris Trendler, and Ruben Rodrigues.
The program recently aired is primarily in English with Dutch subtitles, although it begins with a few minutes of mostly Dutch. To launch it, you may need to select the media player option that works with your system, listed to the right of the video. Very interesting!