Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco has published articles in leading journals on the nature of law, legal positivism, legal methodology and legal objectivity.Her current research focuses on the normative and authoritative character of law and is located at the intersection of classical (Aristotle and Aquinas) and contemporary philosophies of action and legal philosophy.
Feedback & office hours
My office hours for this semester will be the following: Weeks 1, 2, 6: Wednesdays from 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm. Weeks 3,4 and 5: Fridays from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon. Weeks 7 and 9: Wednesdays from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon. Week 10: Tuesday from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm.
Outside of these times, or outside term time, please contact me for an appointment.
Veronica studied law and philosophy at Venezuela, Cambridge and Oxford and joins Birmingham Law School as a lecturer in 2001. In 2006, she was promoted to a Senior Lectureship.
She has been invited to deliver keynote lectures/ papers at the University of Stokholm (2013), University of Loja-II International Congress of Legal Philosophy and Constitutional Justice (Ecuador, 2013), Centre for Law, Philosophy and Human Values at the University of Chicago Law School (2012), University of México, UNAM (2012), University of Palermo (2012), the Third Central and Eastern European Forum for Young Scholars, Belgrade(2011), Conference on "Pluralism" Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Philosophy Department (2011), Royal Institute of Philosophy, Birmingham Branch (2011 Workshop on ‘Free Will), University of Paris-Nanterre (2010), Oxford Jurisprudence Discussion Group (Oxford 2010), Edinburgh Legal Theory Festival (2010), European University Institute, Florence (Italy, 2010), University of Antwerp (Workshop on "Normativity in Law and Morality", 2009),Centre for Law and Society, University of Edinburgh (2009), the University of Girona (Legal Theory Seminars, 2008), Yale Law School (13th Analytic Legal Philosophy Conference, 2008), Jean Beer Blumenfeld Center for Ethics (Georgia State University 2007), University of Bristol (Research Seminars 2006), University of Toronto ( Legal Theory Workshop, 2005), University of Leicester (Legal Theory Workshop 2005), Queen’s University, Belfast (Forum for Law and Philosophy 2003). She has also presented papers in numerous workshops, conferences and congresses.
She has been awarded the Alexander Von Humboldt Fellowship in 2010 (University of Kiel, Germany) and in 2004-5 (University of Heidelberg, Germany), British Academy Grants (Conference Overseas Grant, 2001, 2003), the Cambridge Overseas Trust Scholarship and the British Council- Fundayacucho Scholarship.
She has recently been awarded the Fernand Braudel Senior Research Fellowship at the European University Institute, Florence (2012) and a Research Fellowship from the University Centre St-Ignatius, Antwerp (2011).
She is the Book Review Editor of the journal Jurisprudence: An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought, Evaluator of the Leiter's Philosophical Gourmet Report (legal philosophy section), member of the Board of Editors of the IVR Encyclopedia in Jurisprudence, Legal Theory and Philosophy of Law and member of the Forum for Law and Philosophy (University of Antwerp, Belgium).
Veronica is happy to receive research proposals from potential research students on any of the following areas:
a) Philosophical aspects of Tort and/or Contract Law, e.g. causation in Tort Law, the role of promises in Contract Law.
b) A philosophical analysis of agency and intentional action to shed light on collective and individual responsibilities in the fields of Criminal Law, Human Rights Law, Tort Law and Corporate Law.
c) Empirical research on moral psychology and its implications on our understanding of specific aspects of private law, e.g. omissions.
d) Classical philosophical approaches to agency.
e) Methodological issues on theories of human rights.
Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco's book Meta-ethics, Moral Objectivity and Law and her publications in leading scholarly journals aim to advance a better understanding of the relationship between legal and moral objectivity. She is also interested in, and has written on, the methodological problems in legal theory, i.e. the distinction between normative and descriptive jurisprudence, the nature of conceptual analysis and the idea of paradigm in law.
Her current research is located at the intersection of contemporary philosophy of action, classical and medieval philosophical reflections on intentional action, and legal philosophy. She is currently writing a monograph that focuses on the authoritative and normative character of law and argues that the Aristotelian model of intentional action in terms of the ‘guise of the good’ model a) provides the framework for a sound understanding of the normative and authoritative character of law and b) gives the theoretical grounds to dissolve the paradox of legal authority. The provisional title of the monograph is Law Under the Guise of the Good.