The signature event for each of the Agora’s three weeks is a Distinguished ATLAS Lecture every Wednesday evening, with leading academics, policy-makers, social activists or public intellectuals delivering a major address on a mutually agreed topic that ties into ATLAS themes. At the 2008 Agora, the three Distinguished ATLAS Lecturers were Robert Howse of NYU School of Law (Week 1), Wil Waluchow of the Department of Philosophy, McMaster University (Week 2), and Simon Taylor of Global Witness (Week 3).
Distinguished ATLAS Lecture
By Professor Robert Howse, Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
“The End of the Globalization Debate, Continued”
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
ROBERT HOWSE is an internationally recognized authority on international economic law. He is also a specialist in 20th Century European legal and political philosophy, particularly the thought of Alexander Kojève and Leo Strauss, as well as a significant contributor to Canadian constitutional law scholarship and policy debate. Professor Howse received his B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science with High Distinction, as well as an LL.B., with Honours, from the University of Toronto, where he was co editor in chief of the Faculty of Law Review. Prior to his LLB, he served as Second Secretary and Vice-Consul at the Canadian Embassy in Belgrade from 1984 to 1986.
Howse also holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, Tel Aviv University, University of Paris 1 (Pantheon Sorbonne), Tsinghua University, Osgoode Hall Law School, and the Academy of European Law of the European University Institute. Howse was appointed to the University of Michigan Faculty of Law as Professor of Law in 1999, after eight years at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. At Michigan he was named the Alene and Allan F. Smith Professor of Law in 2003. In 2008, Howse accepted an appointment to a chair at New York University School of Law. He is the author, co author, or editor of six books, including Trade and Transitions; Economic Union, Social Justice, and Constitutional Reform; The Regulation of International Trade; Yugoslavia, the Former and Future; The World Trading System; and The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and Levels of
Governance in the EU and the U.S. He is also the co translator of Alexander Kojève’s Outline for a Phenomenology of Right and the principal author of the interpretative commentary in that volume.
Distinguished ATLAS Lecture
By Professor Wil Waluchow, Professor of Philosophy, McMaster University
“Analytical Philosophy Meets Metaphor: The ‘Living Tree’ of Judicial Interpretation”
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
WIL WALUCHOW is an internationally recognized philosopher. He has a BA and MA in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario and a DPhil in the philosophy of law from Oxford University, where he studied under H.L.A. Hart. He is currently a Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University. Waluchow’s research interests include philosophy of law, ethics and political philosophy. Among his publications are: Inclusive Legal Positivism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Free Expression: Essays in
Law and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); The Dimensions of Ethics (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2003); and A Common Law Theory of Judicial Review: The Living Tree (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
