Matt Matravers

Profile

Biography

Matt Matravers FAcSS
BSc (Econ), PhD (LSE)

Professor of Law, Convenor, LLM in Legal and Political Theory

I joined York Law School in 2015 as Professor of Law having been at the University of York since 1995 serving as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations. I am on the AHRC Peer Review College and am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. In addition, I am Director of the Morrell Centre on Toleration

Research

Overview

• Philosophy of criminal law
• Responsibility in the criminal law
• The justification of punishment
• Dangerousness (with particular reference to personality disorders)
• Crime and criminal justice policy
• Contemporary political philosophy

I would welcome applications from prospective research students in these and related fields. Please do get in touch if you want to discuss a proposal.

Projects

• Responsibility and the Criminal Law

I am currently writing a book on the place of responsibility in the criminal law. The book examines the purposes of the criminal law, the nature of agency implied by those purposes, and the threats that arise from explanatory accounts of human behaviour (including accounts grounded in psychiatry and neuroscience). This is closely related to the next project.

• The Criminal Law’s Person

Together with Claes Lernestedt (Stockholm) I am editing a collection of papers on the idea of the person in the criminal law. These will be published in 2020 by Hart Publishing.

• Trafficking Human Subjects

This project, which involves experts from across Europe, involves looking at the ethical and legal issues involved in the trafficking of human beings.

• Toleration and the Law

Funded by the Morrell Centre for Toleration, this project involves asking what a tolerant legal regime would look like across not only religious toleration, but also legal issues around the family, divorce, free speech, and so on.

Publications

Selected publications

For a complete list of publications, please click on the link above to my profile in the York Research Database.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Philosophy of Criminal Law

Postgraduate

• Foundational Issues in Legal Theory
• Advanced Issues in Legal Theory

External activities

Memberships

• AHRC Peer Review College
• American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy
• Fellow, Academy of Social Sciences
• Society of Legal Scholars