HLA Hart Memorial Lecture

This year's lecture, the 40th in the series funded by the Tanner Foundation, will be given by Professor Danielle Allen, the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. Professor Allen specializes in political philosophy, ethics, and public policy and is the director of the Democratic Knowledge Project and of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation. She is a nonprofit leader, democracy advocate, national voice on AI and tech ethics, distinguished author, and mother. 

The lecture will be held at 5pm in the College Chapel, Main Quad, University College on Tuesday 12 May 2026. The lecture will be followed by drinks at 6.15 pm.

We would be grateful if you could contact Manuela Williams (masters.pa@univ.ox.ac.uk) by Wednesday April 29th to let her know whether you are able to attend the lecture and if you have any mobility requirements. 

The lecture will be streamed live and recorded for future use. It will be followed by a Q&A session.

Abstract

The “radical Duke,” Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, introduced a bill for universal manhood suffrage in the House of Lords in June 1780. The bill emerged from a philosophical and practical effort to solve a constitutional puzzle created in Britain by the growing work of colonial administration and the pressures of the American Revolution. The story of how Richmond, a close collaborator of Edmund Burke and radicals like Thomas Paine in the 1760s and 1770s, developed this proposal is an essentially unknown but important part of British constitutional history and the history of theory and practice of representation. Richmond achieved the technical innovations needed to make modern representation possible. This lecture will introduce these important contributions and unpack their significance for constitutional theory.