Honored for Best Paper in the Philosophy of Law

LOS ANGELES—Mark Greenberg, acting professor of law and assistant professor of philosophy at UCLA, was recently selected as the winner of the 2007 Fred Berger Memorial Prize for outstanding article in the philosophy of law published in 2004-2005.  Greenberg was honored for his article, "How Facts Make Law," which was published in Legal Theory in 2004.

The Berger Memorial Prize in the Philosophy of Law was established by the American Philosophical Association (APA) in memory of Professor Fred Berger of the University of California at Davis.  The prize is awarded every two years for an outstanding published article in the philosophy of law.  The winning selection is made by the APA Committee on Philosophy and Law.

Greenberg will be honored by the APA Committee at a special session for the Berger Prize at the APA Pacific meetings in San Francisco, April 4-8, 2007.

In his award-winning article, Professor Greenberg offers a new argument against the legal positivist view that non-normative social facts can themselves determine the content of the law. He suggests that the nature of the determination relation in law is what he calls “rational determination”: the way in which statutes, cases and other grounds of law affect the content of the law must be rationally intelligible.  He then argues from this claim to the conclusion that normative facts must play a role in determining the content of the law.

After its initial publication in Legal Theory, Professor Greenberg’s “How Facts Make Law” article was reprinted in Exploring Law’s Empire (Scott Hershovitz, ed., Oxford University Press, 2006) and in Problemas Contemporaneos de la Filosofia del Derecho (E. Caceres, I. Flores, J. Saldana, and E. Villanueva, eds., Universidad Nacional Autonoma De Mexico, 2005).  The article will also be reprinted in Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy and in Problema.

Professor Greenberg recently published another article that further develops his winning Berger Prize article, “How Facts Make Law.”  His new piece, entitled “Hartian Positivism and Normative Facts:  How Facts Make Law II,” was published in the same volume in which the original piece was reprinted, Exploring Law’s Empire (Scott Hershovitz, ed., Oxford University Press, 2006).

In winning the Fred Berger Memorial Prize, Professor Greenberg is in good company, as two of his UCLA Law colleagues are previous winners of this award.  Professor Seana Shiffrin, who also holds a joint appointment with UCLA’s philosophy department, won the award in 2003 for her article, "Paternalism, Unconscionability Doctrine, and Accommodation," Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2000.  Earlier, Professor Stephen Munzer won this award for his article, "Ellickson on 'Chronic Misconduct' in Urban Spaces: Of Panhandlers, Bench Squatters, and Day Laborers" in Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 1997.

In addition to the Berger Memorial Prize, Greenberg was also honored for his scholarship last spring when his article, “The Prism of Rules,” was selected as the best paper in the philosophy of law category by the Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum.

Professor Greenberg received his B.A. from the Johns Hopkins University and his J.D. from Boalt Hall. He served as law clerk to the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He was awarded a Marshall Scholarship to study at Oxford University, where he earned both his B.Phil. and D.Phil. in philosophy and was a junior research fellow.

From 2000 to 2004, Greenberg was a faculty member of the philosophy department at Princeton University, where he taught philosophy of mind, ethics, and philosophy of law.  He has also been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Stockholm and a research fellow at the Research School of Social Sciences of the Australian National University.

Before teaching at Princeton, Greenberg served as deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice. His work focused on criminal law and policy, constitutional law (especially equal protection and First Amendment issues), and appellate litigation.  He also worked as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Western District of Pennsylvania.

About UCLA School of Law

Founded in 1949, UCLA School of Law is the youngest major law school in the nation and has established a tradition of innovation in its approach to teaching, research and scholarship.  With approximately 100 faculty and 970 students, the school pioneered clinical teaching, is a leader in interdisciplinary research and training, and is at the forefront of efforts to link research to its effects on society and the legal profession.

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Media Contact:
Philip Little, (310) 206-1131, little@law.ucla.edu