Luís Duarte d’Almeida

Professor of Jurisprudence (Full Professor)

Biographical Note | Pedagogical Experience | Main Publications | Research Areas

Luís Duarte d’Almeida specialises in jurisprudence, legal philosophy, and legal argumentation. He was educated in Lisbon (BA, 1999; LLM, 2003) and at Oxford (DPhil, 2011).

Before joining the NOVA School of Law he was Professor of Jurisprudence (since 2017), Reader (2015-2017) and Chancellor’s Fellow (2012-2015) at the University of Edinburgh, where he now holds (since January 2022) an appointment as Honorary Professorial Fellow.

Prior to that he was (2011/12) a Junior Research Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge and a Research Fellow in Legal Philosophy at the University of Girona; and from 1999 to 2008 we taught, first as an Assistant Lecturer and then as a Lecturer, at the University of Lisbon Law School.

He was also a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence (2016/7), and has since 2017 held a visiting appointment at the KU Leuven Faculty of Law.

Bachelor’s degree (1st Cycle):

  • Critical Legal Thinking

Masters degree (2nd Cycle):

  • Legal Argumentation
  • What is it to Apply the Law?”, Law and Philosophy 40 (2021) 361-386.
  • “Defences in the Law of State Responsibility: A View from Jurisprudence”, in Lorand Bartels and Federica Paddeu, Exceptions and Defences in International Law (Oxford University Press 2020).
  • “On the Legal Syllogism”, in David Plunkett, Scott Shapiro and Kevin Toh (eds.), Legal Norms, Ethical Norms (Oxford University Press 2019).
  • “The Structure of Arguments by Analogy in Law”, co-authored with Claudio Michelon, Argumentation 31:2 (2017) 359-393.
  • “Arguing A Fortiori” Modern Law Review 80:2 (2017) 202-237.
  • “Fundamental Legal Concepts: The Hohfeldian Framework”, Philosophy Compass 11/20 (2016) 554-569.
  • “The Grounds of Law” in Wil Waluchow and Stefan Sciaraffa (eds), The Legacy of Ronald Dworkin (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016).
  • “Denying the Antecedent: The Fallacy that Never Was, or Sometimes Isn’t?”, co-authored with Euan MacDonald, Informal Logic 36 (2016) 26-63.
  • “Allowing for Exceptions: A Theory of Defences and Defeasibility in Law” (Oxford University Press 2015).
  • “Defining ‘Defences”, in Andrew Dyson, James Goudkamp, and Frederick Wilmot-Smith, Defences in Tort (Hart Publishing 2015).
  • “Some Claims about Law’s Claims”, co-authored with James Edwards, Law and Philosophy 33 (2014) 725-746.
  • Reading HLA Hart’s “The Concept of Law“, co-edited with James Edwards and Andrea Dolcetti (Hart Publishing 2013).
  • “Kelsen Revisited: New Essays on the Pure Theory of Law”, co-edited with John Gardner and Leslie Green (Hart Publishing 2013).
  • “Legal Sex”, Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law 2 (2013) 277-309.
  • “O Call Me Not to Justify the Wrong: Criminal Answerability and the Offence/Defence Distinction”, Criminal Law and Philosophy 6 (2012) 227-45.
  • “Legal Statements and Normative Language”, Law and Philosophy 30 (2011) 167-199.
  • Jurisprudence and legal philosophy
  • Reconstruction and analysis of legal arguments
  • Legal reasoning, law and logic, fallacies
  • The justification of law-applying decisions
  • Fundamental legal concepts (duties, rights, liberties, powers, etc.)
  • Philosophy of criminal law and responsibility
  • Defences and the burden of proof
  • Discrimination and LGBT rights