William Ewald
John J. O'Brien Professor of Comparative and International Law and Professor of Philosophy
William Ewald is the John J. O'Brien Professor of Comparative and International Law and Professor of Philosophy at Penn Carey Law School, where he co-directs the Institute of Law & Philosophy. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Oxford and a J.D. from Penn, giving him unusual range across the humanities and formal sciences. He is internationally recognized for his work on the philosophical foundations of comparative law and is the editor of From Kant to Hilbert, a standard source-book in the philosophy of mathematics. He received the LLM Prize for Teaching Excellence for his work with international students.
Teaching Style
Professor Ewald is a deeply learned and intellectually rigorous teacher who brings philosophical precision to the study of comparative and international law. He uses the Socratic method to push students beyond surface-level comparisons between legal systems, demanding that they understand the philosophical foundations underlying different legal traditions. His LLM Teaching Excellence Award reflects his ability to communicate complex ideas across cultural and linguistic boundaries. He cold-calls students and expects careful, well-reasoned responses.
Cold Call Tips
- 1Be prepared to think philosophically about law — Ewald expects students to engage with jurisprudential questions about the nature and foundations of legal systems
- 2Understand the major legal traditions (common law, civil law, and their variants) and be ready to compare their methodological assumptions
- 3Read his comparative jurisprudence work to understand his analytical framework for cross-system comparison
- 4Do not be content with surface-level comparisons; he pushes students to understand why legal systems differ, not just how they differ
Areas of Expertise
Education
- J.D., University of Pennsylvania Law School
- Ph.D., Oxford University (Mathematics)
- B.A., Harvard University
Notable Publications
- Comparative Jurisprudence: What Was It Like to Try a Rat? (University of Pennsylvania Law Review)
- From Kant to Hilbert (editor, Oxford University Press, 1996)
Research Interests
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