Jean Thomas is an Associate Professor at Queen’s Law. She is joint convenor of the Colloquium in Legal and Political Philosophy. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto with a Master of Arts in English Literature and a Juris Doctor, as well as of New York University, with a Master of Laws and a doctorate in law. Prior to joining Queen’s, Professor Thomas was a Post-doctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s McCoy Center for Ethics in Society and a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute.
Research
Questions at the intersection of Ethics, Meta-Ethics, and the Philosophy of Law:
- The nature of rights
- Private law theory, especially tort theory
- The effect of coercion on law’s normativity
- The nature of cultural norms
- Human rights
Publications:
For a full list of publications and other information, please see Professor Thomas' CV.
Books:
- Public Rights, Private Relations, Oxford University Press, 2015. (Hard copy | Oxford Scholarship Online)
- Reviewed:
- 2016 79(5) The Modern Law Review 924-929
- 2016 7(2) Jurisprudence 355-364
- 2016 78(2) Review of Politics 337-339
- 2016 4 Political Studies Review
- 2016 35(5) Law and Philosophy
- Reviewed:
Articles and Book Chapters:
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Jean Thomas(2020)Thinking in three dimensions: theorizing rights as a normative concept, Jurisprudence, DOI: 10.1080/20403313.2020.1782588
- “Our Rights But Whose Duties? Re-conceptualizing Rights in the Era of Globalization” in Boundaries of State, Boundaries of Rights: Human Rights, Private Actors, and Positive Obligations. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
- ‘Which Interests Should Tort Protect?’ 61 Buffalo Law Review 1 2013 [SSRN