Frederick Schauer earns Oxford appointment

Frederick Schauer, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), has been appointed George Eastman Professor at the University of Oxford for the 2007-08 academic year. Schauer will be the 66th holder of the chair, which was created in 1929 by an endowment from George Eastman, founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, to allow “American scholars of the highest distinction” to teach at the university on a visiting basis.

Schauer is a leading American philosopher of law and a political theorist with a research focus on freedom of speech and press, constitutional law, and the philosophical dimensions of law and rules. While at Oxford, he will be a fellow of Balliol College, as well as holding the Eastman Professorship.

“I am deeply honored by my selection to this distinguished chair,” Schauer said. “During my year in England, I intend to teach and write about freedom of speech and press, constitutionalism, human rights, legal development, and legal reasoning, and to take full advantage of a vibrant and exciting community of academics working on topics very close to my own interests.”

Schauer was appointed to the KSG faculty in 1990 and is affiliated with the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. He served as academic dean from 1997 to 2002 and as acting dean in 2001. Formerly professor of law at the University of Michigan, Schauer regularly teaches at Harvard Law School in addition to KSG. In addition, he has been the Ewald Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Virginia and is serving this fall as the Fischel-Neil Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Chicago.

Schauer is the author of numerous books and more than 200 articles on constitutional law and legal theory, including “Profiles, Probabilities, and Stereotypes”; “Playing By the Rules”; “Free Speech: A Philosophical Enquiry”; and “The Law of Obscenity.”

Among the previous 65 Eastman professors are 13 Nobel Prize winners, including economist Robert Solow and chemist Linus Pauling. Schauer will be only the third lawyer to hold the chair, the previous two having been former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and Eugene Rostow, former dean of Yale Law School.