Professor of Law
Education
Ph.D., Yale (1973)
J.D., Yale (1973)
M. Phil., Yale (1971)
M.A., University of California at Berkeley (1967)
A.B., Harvard (1965)
Courses Taught & Research Interests
Criminal Law, Comparative Law, European Federalism, Legal Philosophy, American Legal History
Recent Scholarly Works
On the Legal Validation of Sexual Relationships, Boston College International and Comparative Law Review, forthcoming 2009
Construcción vs. desarrollo, XIX Cuadernos de Bioetica 511 (2008)
Punishment, Invalidation, & Non-Validation: What H. L. A. Hart Didn’t Explain, 14 Legal Theory 219 (2008)
Construction, Development, and Revelopment, XVII Life & Learning 243 (2008)
Securing the Rule of Law Through Interpretive Pluralism: An Argument From Comparative Law, 35 Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 401 (2008)
The Priority of Persons: How our Common Humanity can Ground our Individual Dignity, 44 International Philosophical Quarterly 165 (2004) [also in Spanish]
Location and Life: How Stenberg v. Carhart Undercut Roe v. Wade, 9 William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law 255 (2003)
Dos visiones de la Union Europea, with J.H.H. Weiler (Spain, 2000), reprinted in part in 34 NYU Journal of International Law and Politics 729-47 (2002)
Distinctions & Awards
Swygert Research Fellow, 2003-2005
Professional Activities
Board of Editors, American Journal of Comparative Law
Advisory Council, National Lawyers Association
Academic Council, Doctoral Program in Law, Universidad de los Andes, Chile
Related Professional Experience
1976-1977: Director, Biomedical Ethics, St. Louis Univ. School of Medicine
1980-1981: Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Poona University, India (Fulbright)
1988, fall: Visiting Professor of Law, Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile (Fulbright)
1992, spring: Visiting Professor of Law, Zhongshan University, China (Fulbright)
1996, spring: Visiting Professor of Political Science, UKMA, Ukraine (Fulbright)
2000-2001: Visiting Professor of Law, U. Panamericana, Guadalajara, Mexico (Fulbright)
2007, fall: Visiting Scholar, Philosophy of Law, University of Valencia, Spain
Biographical Sketch
Richard Stith teaches at Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana, where he was named the first Swygert Research Fellow in recognition of his scholarship.
Professor Stith received both his law degree and a doctorate in ethics from Yale University. From Harvard and from the University of California, Berkeley, he holds degrees in political theory.
Besides teaching law, Professor Stith has served as director of the Program in Biomedical Ethics at St. Louis University School of Medicine. He currently serves on the Advisory Council of the National Lawyers Association and on the Board of Editors of the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LAW.
Professor Stith has taught and published on comparative law and legal philosophy in Spain, India, China, Ukraine, Chile and Mexico. In 2001, he became the first U.S. professor to be designated by the European Commission to teach a Jean Monnet Module (on the law of the European Union). He is a consultant on the Academic Council for the doctoral program in law at the Universidad de los Andes in Chile, where he directed doctoral seminars during the summer of 2004.
Professor Stith is a member of the national Board of University Faculty for Life. He has been a speaker at national, state, and international right-to-life gatherings and has presented pro-life testimony by invitation before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution and to state and foreign legislative committees.
Selected Additional Publications
The World as Reality, as Resource, and as Pretense
20 American Journal of Jurisprudence 141-53 (1975)
The Problem of Public Pretense
8(1) Indian Philosophical Quarterly 13-29 (India, 1980)
A Critique of Fairness
16 Valparaiso University Law Review, 459-81 (1982)
Toward Freedom from Value
On Moral Medicine, Lammers and Verhey eds., 164-83 (1987, 1998)
New Constitutional and Penal Theory in Spanish Abortion Law
35 American Journal of Comparative Law 513-58 (1987) [also in Spanish]
Generosity: A Duty without a Right
25/3 Journal of Value Inquiry 203-16 (1991)
Will There be a Science of Law in the Twenty First Century?
22 Revue Générale de Droit 373-79 (Québec, 1991) [also in Spanish]
Images, Spirituality, and Law
10 Journal of Law and Religion 33-47 (1993-94)
Can Practice Do Without Theory? Differing Answers in Western Legal Education
80 Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 426-35 (1994) [& Chinese, Spanish]
On Death and Dworkin: A Critique of his Theory of Inviolability
56 Maryland Law Review 289-383 (1997) [also in Spanish]
The Rule of Law vs. the Rule of Judges: A Plea for Legal Pluralism
1997(3) Political Thought 31-55 (Kiev) [also in Ukrainian, Russian]
México:¿nuevamente una colonia europea?
Monnet-Schumann Papers, U. of Miami (2003)