Professor Deborah S. Hellman

Deborah Hellman is the David Lurton Massee Professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law. She joined the Law School in 2012 after serving on the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Law since 1994.

There are two main strands to Hellman’s work. The first focus on equal protection law and its philosophical justification. She is the author of When is Discrimination Wrong? (Harvard University Press, 2008) and co-editor of The Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law (Oxford University Press, 2013) and several articles related to equal protection. The second strand focuses on the relationship between money and legal rights. This includes articles on campaign finance law, bribery and corruption, each of which explore and challenge the normative foundations of current doctrine. Her article "A Theory of Bribery" won the 2019 Fred Berger Memorial Prize (for philosophy of law) from the American Philosophical Association.  She is an Associate Editor of Law & Philosophy.