Dr. David Lefkowitz specializes in legal and political philosophy. His research interests span three overlapping areas: (1) the morality of obedience and disobedience to law (e.g. the basis, if any, of a moral duty to obey the law, the moral justifiability of civil disobedience, the just treatment of conscientious objectors); (2) analytical and normative issues in international law (e.g. the nature of customary international law, the legitimacy of international law, the existence (or not) of an international rule of law and its implications); and (3) substantive moral questions in the conduct of international affairs (e.g. the morality of secession, the just conduct of war).
Among the courses Dr. Lefkowitz teaches on a semi-regular basis are Philosophy of Law, Ethics and International Affairs, Philosophical Problems in Law and Society (with a focus on criminal law) and, for the PPEL Program, Theory and Public Policy, with a focus on climate change, and two versions of the PPEL Capstone, one with a focus on normative theory and international law, and one with a focus on the ethics, economics, and politics of the Second Machine Age.
From Fall 2009 through Spring 2015 Dr. Lefkowitz served as the founding coordinator of the Program in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law (PPEL), an interdisciplinary major with a focus on normative questions of law and public policy. He has been a visiting research fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values, the U.S. Naval Academy’s Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership, and the National University of Singapore, and a visiting research scholar at Pompeu Fabra University.
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