CFP: Collective Discussions on Normativity, Practical Reason and Law

‘The Collective Discussions’ is an online workshop created by The Collective: Women in Legal Philosophy. It meets a few times a year, and the aim is to discuss pre-read papers that overlap key themes in legal, moral and political philosophy. We strongly encourage submissions in the intersection of philosophy of law and other areas of philosophy.

You are cordially invited to submit a 1000-word abstract on the theme ‘Normativity, Practical Reason and Law’ by 30th October, 2026. Please send the abstract to the following email address: barb665@gmail.com.

The best three abstracts will be selected by the Executive Committee of the Women in Legal Philosophy group. Decisions will be announced in the first week of December. For authors whose submissions are selected, final papers will be due three weeks prior to the scheduled decision. There will be a separate interactive online session in the spring of 2027 for each selected paper. The dates will be arranged by mutual agreement, and the discussion will be open to the public.

Theme for the Spring of 2027: The character of normative and motivational reasons is key to understanding several fundamental questions in relation to law, from authority to promises and the nature of legal guidance. Questions to be addressed include, but are not limited to:

a) How shall we conceive the connection between normative and motivational reasons in the context of the law?

b) Is the law’s guidance determined by the citizen’s structure of practical reason?

c) How should we rethink the idea of coercion or duress in the law in light of practical reasons in private law?

d) Is there a conceptual space to establish a fundamental link between virtue and practical reason in the context of the law?

e) Shall we re-articulate the relationship between legal and moral reasoning?

f) Can political epistemology and/or moral epistemology illuminate key aspects of practical reason in the law?

g) How should we formulate institutional virtue in light of citizens’ practical reason?

h) Do our assumptions on human action determine our theories of law’s normativity?

i) Do meta-ethical positions such as constitutivism, moral realism, internalism or externalism illuminate law’s practical reason?

?j) In which way do new insights on the philosophy of language illuminate law’s normativity?

k) How should we conceive law’s practical reasoning in the light of recent work in the philosophy of language?

l) Is there any respect in which normativity in law is sui generis?

m) How should we conceive of the notion of being bound by law in the light of recent common law practices regarding precedent?

n) What role does commitment play in the normativity of law? In practical reason regarding law?

o) What are the relevant relations between a) practical agents and b) epistemic agents

p) Are there reasons for action for officials and subjects of law that are only reasons from the point of view of law?