Workshop: Accountability and its Practices in Law and Philosophy
Joint MPI-LMU Law and Philosophy Workshop 'Accountability and its Practices', LMU Munich July 17th-19th 2025
Confirmed Speakers: R. Jay Wallace (UC Berkeley), Linda Radzik (Texas A&M), Benjamin Zipurksy (Fordham), Florian Roedl (FU Berlin), Dana Nelkin (UC San Diego), Chris Bennett (Sheffield), Klaus Guenther (Frankfurt), Leora Dahan Katz (Hebrew U).
Accountability is a central concept in both law and moral philosophy. Indeed, accountability can be understood as the organizing concept around which other legal and moral concepts are organized, such as the authority of law or moral obligations. However, we believe that one aspect of accountability has received less attention than it deserves - the practices of accountability and their (dis)similarity in law and morality. To address this shortcoming, the workshop aims to bring together scholars from law and philosophy to explore and discuss the nature, function, and (meta-ethical) implications of accountability practices in both legal and moral contexts.
The workshop will focus on exploring the nature of three interrelated practices and related concepts that together constitute what is commonly referred to as accountability in law and moral philosophy:
- practices of blame, including verdicts of guilt, sentencing, punishment for breaches of duty, condemnation, personal wrongings, and reproach
- practices of restitution, including acknowledgment of wrongdoing, apology, compensation, and regret
- practices of repair, including forgiveness, expressions of mercy, and correction of wrongs.
What are the standards of these practices and what function, if any, do they serve? Do they differ in the legal context compared to the moral context? What can moral philosophers learn from law about accountability and its practices, and vice versa? Second, what are the meta-ethical (normative) implications of these findings? What do these practices tell us about the nature and relationship of law and morality?
We aim to fill the remaining conference slots via a call for abstracts. Abstracts should be no longer than 750 words and provide a summary of the main conclusions and arguments of the paper/talk. The abstracts will be subject to blind review. We encourage in particular early career researchers to apply.
Please send your anonymised abstracts to lawandphiloworkshop2025@gmail.com by March 16th 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be send out by March 31st 2025.
The workshop is jointly organized by Philipp-Alexander Hirsch (MPI Freiburg) and Jonas Vandieken (LMU Munich) and generously supported by the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Crime, Security, and Law and the Center for Ethics and Philosophy in Practice at LMU Munich.