Is Legal Intrepretation Exceptional?

Please join the Rotman Institute of Philosophy for "Is Legal Interpretation Exceptional?", a one-day interdisciplinary workshop exploring the nature of law and legal inquiry.

When: Friday, September 25, 2026
Time: 9:00am-5:30pm (See detailed schedule below)
Where: WIRB 3000

Law has a special place in society and in our thinking about the world. Understanding and working with the law calls for significant training and expertise on the part of lawyers and judges. But although law is of particular significance, does it follow that it is exceptional in its nature and in the methods that we use to study it?

This one-day workshop, hosted by The Rotman Institute of Philosophy’s Think Tank Project Is Law Exceptional?, will bring together scholars from law, philosophy, and other fields to investigate this issue with a particular focus on legal language. Five scholars will present new research on legal language and interpretation and how they relate to language and interpretation outside of law.

*Papers will be circulated for participants to read in advance of the workshop.

REGISTRATION COMING SOON

Schedule

• 9:00 - 10:00 am: Breakfast
• 10:00 - 11:00 am: Tilly Brooks (Stanford), "Loose Canons: Revisiting the Linguistic Canons"; comments by Dakota Wing (York)
• 11:00 - 11:30 am: Coffee break
  11:30 am - 12:30 pm: Andy Yu (Western), "Legal Interpretation as Linguistic Interpretation"; comments by Felipe Jimenez (USC)
• 12:30 - 2 :00 pm: Lunch
• 2:00 - 3:00 pm: Alma Diamond (Texas), "Why Social Obligations Matter"; comments by Jasmine Gunkel (Western)
• 3:00 - 4:00 pm: Felipe Jimenez (USC), "Let's Stop Talking About Interpretation (Towards an Ethics of Adjudication)"; comments by Manish Oza (Western)
• 4:00 - 4:30 pm: Coffee break
• 4:30 - 5:30 pm: Jeesoo Nam (USC), "Originalism and Context Dependence"; comments by Kara Woodbury-Smith (York)