Tuesday, March 21, 2023 - 4:10pm to 6:00pm
Location: 
J140 Professor A.V. Dicey Classroom or join the livestream

“Democracy and Trust”

Jedediah Purdy, Raphael Lemkin Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law

To register, visit wrightmemorialecture2023.eventbrite.com

Tuesday, March 21, 2023
4:10pm to 6:00pm
Jackman Law Building, Room, Room 140
78 Queen's Park

Abstract

Does a democratic renewal need political trust? Will movements for deepened democracy fail because citizens mistrust one another too much to rule together? Without trust, are we trapped seeking a democracy we cannot achieve?

Biography

A prolific scholar, Purdy teaches and writes about environmental, property, and constitutional law as well as legal and political theory. He is the author of of Two Cheers for Politics: Why Democracy Is Flawed, Frightening – and Our Best Hope and edited the Norton Library edition of Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854), alongside three of Thoreau's most influential political essays: "Civil Disobedience," "Slavery in Massachusetts," and "A Plea for Captain John Brown."

His legal scholarship has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, Nomos, and Ecology Law Quarterly, among others. He has published essays on topics ranging from Elena Ferrante’s novels and socialism to natural disasters and the Green New Deal in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Die Zeit, and Democracy Journal.

Purdy clerked for Judge Pierre N. Leval of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York City. A member of the New York State Bar, he is a contributing editor of The American Prospect and serves on the editorial board of Dissent. He was active in the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina and was voluntarily arrested for civil disobedience in 2013.