Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law
Education
- Ph.D., Cornell University (1976)
- B.A., Calvin College (1970)
Postema has published extensively in legal and political philosophy and ethics. In 2011 he published Legal Philosophy in the 20th Century: The
Common Law World, He wrote Bentham and the Common Law Tradition (Clarendon 1986/1989) and edited Racism and the Law (Kluwer 1997); Rationality, Conventions, and the Law (Kluwer 1998); Jeremy Bentham: Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy (Ashgate 2002) and Philosophy and the Law of Torts (CUP 2001). He is associate editor of the 12 volume, Treatise in the Philosophy of Law (Springer 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011).
A selection of the jurisprudential writings of Sir Matthew
Hale
will also be published by Oxford University Press under his editorship. Former Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellow, and fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies and the National Humanities Center, he was editor of Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law (1995-2006) and was special issues editor of Law and Philosophy (1996-2001). In fall, 2012, he was awarded the George
J. Johnson Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Art and Humanities,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Curriculum Vitae 
Selected Publications
Show All Publications
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Legal Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: The Common Law World, 11 TREATISE LEGAL PHIL. GEN. JURISPRUDENCE (2011). [SSRN]
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Legal Positivism: Early Foundations (2011). [SSRN]
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Law's Ethos: Reflections on a Public Practice of Illegality, 90 B.U. L. REV. 1847 (2010) (symposium). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, Hein]
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Sweet Dissonance: Conflict, Consensus, and the Rule of Law, 17 HARV. REV. PHIL. 36 (Fall 2010).
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Nature as First Custom: Hayek on the Evolution of Social Rules (2009). [SSRN]
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Salience Reasoning, 27 TOPOI (2008). [SSRN, Document Link]
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A similibus ad similia: Analogical Thinking, in LAW in COMMON LAW THEORY, (D. Edlin ed., Cambridge University Press 2007). [K588 .C668 2007 ]
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Custom in International Law: A Normative Practice Account, in THE NATURE OF CUSTOMARY LAW: LEGAL, HISTORICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES (J. Murphy & A. Perreau-Saussine, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2007). [KD8864 .N38 2007]
- TREATISE OF LEGAL PHILOSOPHY AND GENERAL JURISPRUDENCE, (G. Postema ed., volumes 6-8, Springer 2007). [Document Link K230 .P377 T74 2005]
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Bentham's Utilitarianism in THE BLACKWELL GUIDE TO MILL'S UTILITARIANISM (H. West, ed., Blackwell Publishers, 2006). [B1603.U873 B74 2006]