Heidi M. Hurd
David C. Baum Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy
Co-Director, Program in Law and Philosophy
Phone: 217-244-3446
Email: hhurd@illinois.edu
B.A. Queen’s University
M.A. Dalhousie University
J.D., Ph.D. University of Southern CaliforniaCourses
Criminal Law
Torts
Evidence
Advanced Torts
Ethics
Justice, Law and MoralityA scholar in the areas of criminal law, torts, political theory, and general jurisprudence, David C. Baum Professor of Law and Philosophy Heidi M. Hurd served as the College's 11th Dean from 2002 through 2007, announcing in May 2007 that she would return to the faculty. Under her Deanship, the College of Law significantly increased incoming student credentials to place them among the nation's Top 15 based on LSAT scores and median GPA, recruited 17 tenure or tenure-track faculty, lowered the student/faculty teaching ratio to 12:1, broadened the curriculum and introduced small section classes in the first year program, and saw faculty productivity climb from the mid-30's to seventh in the nation based on submissions to the Social Science Research Network. Under Dean Hurd's leadership, the College also received an enormous increase in annual fund and endowment support from alumni, setting the stage for the current $50 million Capital Campaign.
Before coming to Illinois, Professor Hurd spent most of her career as a Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and as the Co-Founder and Director of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Law and Philosophy. While at Penn, she was also a Visiting Professor at the University of Virginia Law School and the University of Iowa Philosophy Department, and she spent several summers teaching law and political theory in Hungary, Germany, and Ukraine.
Before joining the faculty at the University of Illinois College of Law, Professor Hurd was the Herzog Research Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Institute for Law and Philosophy at the University of San Diego Law School. From January-June 2002, she was a Visiting Research Fellow in the Law Program of Australian National University's Research School of Social Sciences in Canberra, Australia. In May 2004 and May 2007 she was a Visiting Professor at the University of Tel Aviv School of Law where she taught courses in criminal law and tort law theory. And in 2008 she has been a Visiting Fellow in the College of Law at the Australian National University and has co-taught a Soros Foundation Seminar on the General Right of Liberty and the Limits of Criminal Legislation in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Professor Hurd is the Co-Director of the College's Program in Law and Philosophy and the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Law and Philosophy (Kluwer Press). Professor Hurd is a very active scholar, publishing eleven articles on topics in political theory, criminal law, and jurisprudence during her five-year deanship alone. Since her transition back to full-time teaching and scholarship, Professor Hurd has authored a number of articles in criminal law theory (on the role of mistakes within a theory of responsibility, the justifiability of imposing the death penalty in cases of child rape, and the principled limits of criminal legislation). She has also ventured into new areas of interest with an article in contract theory entitled "Promises Schmomises" and two contributions to bankruptcy theory entitled "The Virtue of Bankruptcy" and "The Jurisprudence of Bankruptcy" (the latter piece co-authored with Professor Ralph Brubaker).
Professor Hurd is the author of Moral Combat (Cambridge University Press, 1999) which has been widely reviewed and translated into multiple languages. Her numerous articles in the areas of criminal law, torts, legal philosophy, and political theory have appeared in the nation's top law and philosophy journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Legal Theory, Law and Philosophy, Chicago Law Forum, Notre Dame Law Review, Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues, Boston University Law Review, Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy, and Southern California Law Review. She has presented more than 90 lectures and papers at conferences across the United States and Europe, as well as in Israel, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Argentina, Canada, and Australia, and in 1999, she provided testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on the proposed Hate Crime Prevention Act of 1999. She regularly teaches criminal law, evidence, torts, and jurisprudence, as well as philosophy courses in ethics and political theory.
Professor Hurd's personal statement to the Illinois Admissions Review commision can be found here.
