Professor of Philosophy
Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice
- B.A. UC Berkeley, 1988
- B. Phil. Oxford, 1990
- D. Phil. Oxford, 1993
- J.D. Harvard, 1996
- UCLA Faculty Since 1992
Seana Valentine Shiffrin is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice at UCLA, where she has taught since 1992. She is the co-founder and co-director of the UCLA Law and Philosophy Program. Shiffrin received her B.A. degree from UC Berkeley where she was the University Medalist. She attended Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar and received the B.Phil. with Distinction and the D.Phil. in Philosophy. She earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School. Shiffrin teaches courses on moral and political philosophy as well as contracts, freedom of speech, and legal theory. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2016, she received the UCLA School of Law's Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Her research has addressed doctrinal and theoretical issues about freedom of speech, sincerity and truthfulness, contracts, torts, feminism, intellectual property, anti-discrimination, economic equality, reproductive rights and family law, with a thematic focus on the social conditions for the joint realization of equality and autonomy. She has written extensively on he role of law in facilitating and fostering deliberation and moral character, with a special emphasis on freedom of speech and the connection between contracts and promises. Her book Speech Matters, explored the ethics of communication and the connection between the moral prohibition on lying, a thinker-based approach to freedom of speech, and the conditions for moral progress. Her recent book, Democratic Law, addressed the intimate connection between law and democracy and traced the implications of a democratic legal approach for the common law, the doctrine of good faith, and constitutional balancing.