Rate My Professor Mitchell Berman

Mitchell Berman serves as the Leon Meltzer Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He also holds nonvoting appointments as Professor of Philosophy in the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School. As Co-Director of the Institute for Law and Philosophy, Berman earned his A.B. magna cum laude in Government from Harvard University in 1988, J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School in 1993—where he was Order of the Coif, received the prize for most outstanding first-year performance, and served as Articles Editor of the Michigan Law Review—and M.A. in Political Science from the University of Michigan in 1994. Before joining Penn in July 2014, he was the Richard Dale Endowed Chair in Law at the University of Texas School of Law from 2008 to 2014, Bernard J. Ward Centennial Professor from 2002 to 2008, and Assistant Professor from 1998 to 2002. He also held a nonvoting professorship in the UT Austin Department of Philosophy from 2009 to 2014 and has been a visiting professor at institutions including Princeton University's Center for Human Values as a Laurance S. Rockefeller Fellow in 2017-2018, the Hebrew University in 2012, and the University of Chicago Law School in 2003.

Berman writes and teaches in American constitutional law and theory, philosophy of criminal law, general jurisprudence, and philosophy of sport. His scholarship features a novel nonoriginalist theory of constitutional interpretation, a positivist account of legal content, and a retributivist justification of criminal punishment. Key publications include the co-authored textbook The Jurisprudence of Sport: Sports and Games as Legal Systems (West Academic Publishing, 2021), which introduces legal concepts through sports rules; Our Principled Constitution, 166 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1325 (2018); The Tragedy of Justice Scalia, 115 Michigan Law Review 783 (2017); Rehabilitating Retributivism, 32 Law & Philosophy 83 (2013); and "Let 'em Play": A Study in the Jurisprudence of Sport, 99 Georgetown Law Journal 1325 (2011). An award-winning teacher, he received the Harvey Levin Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence in 2019 and the Texas Exes Teaching Excellence Award in 2008.