Mark Greenberg, UCLA acting professor of law and assistant professor of philosophy, was recently selected as the winner of the 2007 Fred Berger Memorial Prize in Philosophy of Law for his 2004 article "How Facts Make Law," published in the journal Legal Theory.

The Berger Memorial Prize, presented every two years for an outstanding published article on the philosophy of law, was established by the American Philosophical Association (APA) in memory of philosophy professor Fred Berger of the University of California, Davis. The winning selection is made by the APA's Committee on Philosophy and Law, which this year considered articles written in 2004 and 2005.

Greenberg will be honored by the committee at a special session for the Berger Prize at the APA Pacific meeting in San Francisco, April 4-8.

In his award-winning article, Greenberg offers a new argument against the legal positivist view that non-normative social facts can themselves determine the content of the law. He suggests that the nature of the determination relation in law is what he calls "rational determination" - that is, the way in which statutes, cases and other grounds of law affect the content of the law must be rationally intelligible. He then argues from this claim to the conclusion that normative facts must play a role in determining the content of the law.

After its initial publication in Legal Theory, Greenberg's article was reprinted in "Exploring Law's Empire" (2006), a collection of essays by legal theorists and philosophers, and "Problemas Contemporáneos de la Filosofia del Derecho" (2005), another collection of legal essays, published in Mexico. The article will also be reprinted in the journal Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy and in the journal Problema.

Greenberg recently published another article, "Hartian Positivism and Normative Facts: How Facts Make Law II," which further develops the arguments made in his Berger Prize-winning piece. This article also was included in the collection "Exploring Law's Empire."
In winning the Berger Memorial Prize, Greenberg joins two previous winners from the UCLA School of Law. Professor Seana Shiffrin, who holds a joint appointment with UCLA's philosophy department, won the award in 2003 for her 2000 article "Paternalism, Unconscionability Doctrine, and Accommodation" in Philosophy and Public Affairs, and professor Stephen Munzer won in 1999 for "Ellickson on 'Chronic Misconduct' in Urban Spaces: Of Panhandlers, Bench Squatters, and Day Laborers," published in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review in 1997.

In addition to the Berger Memorial Prize, Greenberg was honored for his scholarship in spring 2006, when his article "The Prism of Rules" was selected as the best paper on the philosophy of law by the Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum.

Greenberg received his bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins University and his J.D. from Boalt Hall law school at the University of California, Berkeley. He served as law clerk to Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and was awarded a Marshall Scholarship to study at Oxford University, where he earned a B.Phil. and D.Phil. and was a junior research fellow.

From 2000 to 2004, Greenberg was a faculty member of the philosophy department at Princeton University, where he taught philosophy of mind, philosophy of law, and ethics. He has also been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Stockholm and a research fellow at the Research School of Social Sciences of the Australian National University.

Before teaching at Princeton, Greenberg served as deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice. His work focused on criminal law and policy, constitutional law (especially equal protection and First Amendment issues), and appellate litigation. He also worked as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's offices for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Western District of Pennsylvania.

About UCLA School of Law
Founded in 1949, UCLA School of Law is the youngest major law school in the nation and has established a tradition of innovation in its approach to teaching, research and scholarship. With approximately 100 faculty and 970 students, the school pioneered clinical teaching, is a leader in interdisciplinary research and training, and is at the forefront of efforts to link research to its effects on society and the legal profession.

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