Claire Finkelstein

Claire Finkelstein is the Algernon Biddle Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She writes at the intersection of philosophy and law. Claire Finkelstein writes at the intersection of moral and political philosophy and the law. She has published extensively in the areas of criminal law theory, moral and political philosophy as applied to legal questions, jurisprudence, and rational choice theory, and has recently begun writing on the law and ethics of war. Claire Finkelstein writes at the intersection of moral and political philosophy and the law. She has published extensively in the areas of criminal law theory, moral and political philosophy as applied to legal questions, jurisprudence, and rational choice theory, and has recently begun writing on the law and ethics of war. One of her distinctive contributions is bringing philosophical rational choice theory to bear on legal theory. She has focused in recent years on the implications of Hobbes’ political theory for substantive legal questions. She is currently finishing a book entitled Contractarian Legal Theory and is the editor (with Jens Ohlin and Andrew Altman) of a volume entitled Targeted Killings: Law & Mortality in an Asymmetrical World (Oxford University Press, 2012), and of Hobbes on Law (Ashgate, 2005). She has been a Co-Director of Penn’s Institute for Law and Philosophy, and this year will be continuing the work of the Institute under the heading Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law.