Joseph Raz studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and came to Oxford for the DPhil under H.L.A.Hart’s supervision, completing his thesis on the concept of legal system in 1967. He was a Tutorial Fellow in Law at Balliol College from 1972 to 1985, and a Professor in the University of Oxford from 1985 to 2009. He was a Professor at Columbia Law School from 2002 to 2019, and held a Research Professorship at King’s College London from 2011. In his writings, Professor Raz put legal and moral and political philosophy in a new perspective. He brought a unique and renowned combination of intellectual creativity and analytical rigour to the general theory of law and to the investigation of the nature of authority and the conditions for its legitimacy. Through his account of human autonomy, he made a major contribution to political theory. He elucidated the nature of reason and its value in human life.
Here we collect reminiscences of colleagues and friends, many of them former students of Professor Raz. We have also collected links to other sources of information and commentary on Professor Raz, and on his work.
We are glad to present several of Professor Raz’s photographs on these pages, with the permission of Dr Penelope Bulloch. Anyone who wishes to make use of a photograph by Joseph Raz in a publication of their own work is asked to get in touch with penelope.bulloch@balliol.ox.ac.uk.