Liam B. Murphy

Courses

• Contract Theory Seminar

  The seminar addresses the fundamental questions of contract theory and doctrine: Which promises and agreements should be legally enforced, and why? What should the remedy for breach of contract be? How should courts fill gaps in the parties’ agreement? On what grounds should the law excuse–refuse to enforce–an otherwise enforceable contractual obligation? What could justify third party enforcement of a contract? The readings will be drawn from legal scholarship drawing on a variety of theoretical perspectives—including the philosophic and the economic—that have been influential in the development of contract law in the United States.

• Contracts

  The body of law concerned with private agreements, including capacity to contract, contract formation, interpretation, conditions, excuse of performance, and remedies for breach, is the focus of this course. Attention is given to the Uniform Commercial Code and other relevant statutes as well as to principles of common law and equity.

• Introduction to Moral and Political Philosophy

  This course will cover central topics in moral and political philosophy on the basis of readings from the seventeenth century to the present, including Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Wollstonecraft, Mill, Rawls, and Nagel. The course has three main focuses. The first is meta-ethics: questions of objectivity, moral psychology, and the rational basis of morality. The second focus is on the main substantive issues of moral theory: consequentialism versus deontology, and so on. The third is political theory. Here the main questions are: What are the conditions that a system of government must satisfy before its use of coercive power can be considered legitimate? and What are the conditions that a society must satisfy before it can be considered just? A theme throughout will be the connections among these three areas of focus.