Can Tort Law Transform the Citizen Towards Civic Maturity? Rights, Values and Practical Reason

Max-Planck-Gastvortrag

Datum: 15.07.2025
Uhrzeit: 17:00 - 19:00
Vortragende: Prof. Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco (University of Surrey Centre for Law and Philosophy)
Professor Dr. Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco is the Inaugural Chair of Moral and Political Philosophy (Jurisprudence) at the University of Surrey Centre for Law and Philosophy, United Kingdom. She studied law and legal philosophy at Oxford University (MJur) and the University of Cambridge (PhD). She is the author of numerous articles, co-editor of Bernard Williams on Law and Jurisprudence (Bloomsbury/Hart 2025), Agency, Negligence and Responsibility (CUP, 2021), Dignity in the Legal and Political Philosophy of Ronald Dworkin (OUP, 2018), Reasons and Intentions in Law and Practical Agency (CUP, 2015) and has written the monographs Responsibility for Negligence in Ethics and Law: Aspiration, Perspective, and Civic Maturity (OUP 2025) and Law and Authority Under the Guise of the Good (Bloomsbury/Hart, 2014). Her work has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese and Russian. Rodriguez-Blanco has been Visiting Professor at the University of Stockholm and Vienna, and has delivered keynote lectures at Yale, Toronto, Princeton, Oxford and many other Universities in Europe, USA and Soth America. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from the British Academy, Max Planck Institute, the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation, the European University Institute, Cambridge Overseas Trust and the British Council. She is co-editor of the journal Jurisprudence.
Ort: Freiburg, Fürstenbergstr. 19
Raum: Seminarraum (F 113) | Gäste sind herzlich eingeladen; Anmeldung erbeten
Gastgeber: Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung von Kriminalität, Sicherheit und Recht
Kontakt: c.hillemanns@csl.mpg.de

Can Tort Law Transform the Citizen Towards Civic Maturity? Rights, Values and Practical Reason

The orthodox view regarding private law and, more specifically, the law of negligence is that it only deals with our rights and duties. Hence, values and civic maturity play no role in private law reasoning. Furthermore, Bernard Williams poses a pugnacious puzzle that arises in regard to civic maturity. If we ask the citizen to ‘take responsibility,’ then the answer demonstrates precisely that the citizen either has not shown maturity or is not mature. A sign of maturity means taking responsibility through our realization and reflections, not because someone else has told us to do so. Contra Williams, I will argue that tort law advances proleptic thoughts and ways of engaging with values so that the citizen inhabits a deliberative-aspirational perspective that reflects civic maturity. However, there is a tension between the idea of civic maturity itself and legal responsibility, and between rights and values or the good. The lecture will concentrate on this tension and will offer a solution to either dissolve or mitigate it.

Professor Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco is one of our current Barbara Huber Scholarship holders. This program, in honor of the late researcher Dr. Barbara Huber, is open to outstanding academics from foreign research institutions for particularly innovative research projects. These projects contribute significantly to scientific progress by advancing new insights, perspectives, and understanding in the fields of criminal law, criminology, and public law. Barbara Huber Scholarships are awarded for research stays at the Institute for up to six months. The Barbara Huber Scholarships and this Barbara Huber Guest Lecture are funded in part by the family of Dr. Barbara Huber – in memory of her legacy.

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