The Center for Civil Law Studies of the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center presents the 30th John H. Tucker, jr. Lecture in Civil Law
Dean Horacio Spector
(Torcuato Di Tella School of Law, Argentina)
The Future of Legal Science in Civil Law Systems
(65 La. L. Rev. 255)
Dean Horacio Spector is an Argentine legal theorist. He graduated as Lawyer from the University of Buenos Aires in 1979 and as Master of Philosophy from the Argentine Society of Philosophical Analysis in 1986. In 1990, he obtained his Doctorate in Legal Science from the University of Buenos Aires. Between 1984-1995, he was Associate Professor of Law and Fellow of the Institute of Legal Research at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1996, he became Professor of Law at the Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires, where he regularly teaches Legal Theory, Moral and Political Philosophy, and Law and Economics. He is the founding Dean of the School of Law of Torcuato Di Tella University. In such capacity, he recruited a full-time faculty and worked to modernize Argentine legal teaching and research on the model of the best American law schools. In the context of such efforts, Dean Spector created a theoretically minded law program in 1996 and the first LL.M. program in Law and Economics in Latin America in 2000. Di Tella innovations in legal education are followed by many Argentine law schools. In particular, the school pioneered the use of the case method in various courses in Civil Law and emphasized the usefulness of theoretical analytical frameworks to understand and reform legal institutions.
Dean Spector was the Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Mannheim, Department of Social Theory, in 1986-1987, and at the University of Heidelberg, Department of Philosophy, in 1990. In 1987, he was visiting researcher at the Balliol College (Oxford University) where he worked with Professor Joseph Raz. In 1993-1994, Dean Spector held a research fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2000 and 2002, Dean Spector was the Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto. He has published two books: Autonomy and Rights. The Moral Foundations of Liberalism (Oxford University Press, 1992), and Analytische und Postanalytische Ethik. Untersuchungen zur Theorie moralischer Urteile (Alber Verlag, Freiburg-München, 1993). He also published many articles in English in academic journals such as Mind, Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, Rechtstheorie, European Journal of Intellectual Property, and Law and Philosophy. He is a member of the editorial board of Law and Philosophy, and co-edited Rights, Liberty, and Equality (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2000).
Dean Spector has made presentations at the Universities of Lund (Sweden), Bologna, Arizona State University, University of North Carolina, University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), ITAM (Mexico), and Tulane University, among others. In 1996, he was awarded the Konex Prize in Legal Theory.
