Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Integrative Research Institute Law & Society (LSI)

Due to the current closure of the university the lecutre will unfortunately be postponed. We will inform you about the new dates as soon as they are fixed.

In his project The Morality of Privatization Alon Harel (Professor of Law at the Hebrew University Jerusalem and Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin) criticizes the wide-held belief that the division of labour in providing goods between the state and the individual rests primarily on instrumental considerations of economic efficiency. According to this instrumental view, in principle, all goods can be provided by either private or public entities and the choice between these two rests merely on the question of who is most likely to provide the goods more efficiently. In contrast, Alon Harel argues that public provision of certain goods is necessary, not because the state is better at providing these goods, but because these goods should be provided in our name as members of a political community. Some governmental decisions cannot be successfully made (or executed) by private entities, as the goodness of the goods resulting from these decisions can be realized only by the state.

Alon Harels lecture will be commented by Dan Wielsch (Chair for Private Law and Legal Theory at Universität zu Köln).

This lecture is part of the series New Political Economies of Law of the Integrative Research Institute Law & Society (LSI) of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.