Philip Soper, the James V. Campbell Professor Emeritus of Law, began his academic career at Michigan in 1973. He teaches courses in contracts and legal and moral philosophy.

Soper is the author of A Theory of Law (Harvard University Press, 1984) and The Ethics of Deference (Cambridge University Press, 2002), as well as numerous articles on legal and moral philosophy. Following his clerkship, he spent a year studying philosophy at Oxford University and then practiced two years in the General Counsel’s Office at the Council on Environmental Quality in Washington, DC.

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Education
  • Washington University in St. Louis, summa cum laude
  • Washington University in St. Louis, MA, philosophy
  • Washington University in St. Louis, PhD, philosophy
  • Harvard University, JD, magna cum laude; Harvard Law Review

    • Clerkships

    • Supreme Court of the United States, the Hon. Byron R. White
    Featured scholarship

    Review of Epistemic Uncertainty and Legal Theory by B. Burge-Hendrix

    Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence
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    "In Defense of Classical Natural Law in Legal Theory: Why Unjust Law is No Law at All"

    Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence
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    "On the Relation Between Form and Substance in Law"

    Ratio Juris
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    "Why Theories of Law Have Little or Nothing to Do with Judicial Restraint"

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