Joel Feinberg

Joel Feinberg (October 19, 1926 – March 29, 2004) was an American political and legal philosopher. He is known for his work in the fields of ethics, action theory, philosophy of law, and political philosophy, as well as individual rights and the authority of the state. Feinberg was one of the most influential figures in American law, jurisprudence and political science over the last fifty years. He studied at the University of Michigan, writing his dissertation on the philosophy of the Harvard University professor Ralph Barton Perry under the supervision of Charles Stevenson. He taught at Brown University, Princeton University, UCLA and Rockefeller University, and, from 1977, at the University of Arizona, where he retired in 1994 as Regents Professor of Philosophy and Law. Feinberg was internationally distinguished for his research in moral, social and legal philosophy. His major four-volume work, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, was published between 1984 and 1988. Feinberg held many major fellowships during his career and lectured by invitation at universities around the world. He was an esteemed and highly successful teacher, and many of his students are now prominent scholars and professors at universities across the US. His former students include Jules Coleman, Russ Shafer-Landau, and Clark Wolf.