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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Justin Harmon 609/258-5732
Date: September 30, 1997
Princeton to Establish Program in Law
and Public AffairsPRINCETON, N.J. -- A new Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University will address ways in which various legal systems, legal practices, and laws can contribute to justice and order in societies and to the well-being of individuals.
A collaboration of the University's Department of Politics, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and University Center for Human Values, the program will seek to create an intellectual forum for discussion of ways in which legal systems and practices can and should be shaped by changing human and social circumstances, as well as by new knowledge of the world around us. The program will sponsor research as well as conferences and lectures by Princeton faculty and distinguished visitors.
"More than any other institution, the liberal arts university produces, assesses, and integrates knowledge and understandings of the world in which we live," said Professor of Politics and Public Affairs Jameson Doig, who chairs the Politics Department. "A liberal arts university with Princeton's rich tradition of scholarship and learning in jurisprudence, legal philosophy, legal history, and public policy will be well attuned to the requisites of first-rate scholarship in this area."
The program will pursue critical questions concerning how well social purposes are served and individual rights are respected by the various legal institutions that are commonly identified with democracy in America, such as the adversary system in civil and criminal law, the jury system, and winner-take-all elections. Depending upon the particular interests and expertise of the program director, as well as Princeton faculty and visiting scholars, the program from year to year will frame such questions as:
= What kinds of laws and legal institutions can really help the homeless? What rights should they have -- and what rights should they not have?
= How might advances in our understanding of mental illness and treatment affect our views of moral and legal responsibility and culpability?
= How should new information technologies influence moral and legal approaches to free speech? How might the law help realize the intellectual, economic, and social potentials of the new technologies?
= How does the knowledge we now possess about the importance of early childhood experience for subsequent development affect our understandings of equality of opportunity and corresponding legal obligations for educating children?
= How can campaign financing work effectively to support the fair workings of a democratic system and to respect free speech?
The program will be housed at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, with a director, an administrator and several visiting scholars each year. A steering committee will be formed this fall to plan for the new program.
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