Staff profile

I joined Durham Law School in September 2018 and am a founding member of the Durham Centre for Law and Philosophy.

I have a BA in Psychology from Hobart and William Smith Colleges (2004), an MA in Ethics and the Philosophy of Theology from King’s College, London (2007), and a PhD in Philosophy from McMaster University (2020) where I studied under the supervision of Wil Waluchow.

Whilst my philosophical interests are varied, I tend to write about general jurisprudence, the nature of coercion, how coercion and law conceptually relate, and how they should come together in legal practice.

• General Jurisprudence
• Ethics (meta and normative)
• Philosophy of international law
• Philosophy of constitutional law
• Philosophy of human rights law

• Durham Centre for Law and Philosophy

• 2023: The Collective: Women in Legal Philosophy: Named to the Executive Committee
• 2022: Top Downloaded Article recognition by Wiley: ['The Nature of Law and Potential Coercion' (2020) was one of the most downloaded papers in the12 months following online publication.]
• 2021: Awarded the 'Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Staff Award,' Durham Law School:
• 0000: Invited presentations:
  1. 'Inclusive Legal Positivism and Entailed Law’ | Jurisprudence Discussion Group. Oxford University Faculty of Law, Oxford, UK. 9 February 2023. ;

  2. ‘Incentivising Law' | Women in Legal Philosophy Workshop. Surrey Centre for Law and Philosophy, Surrey, UK. 9 December 2022. ;

  3. ‘The Complication with Coercion’ | Newcastle Law School Seminar Series: Law, Politics, and the Power of Imagination. Newcastle University, Newcastle Law School. Online. May 2020. ;

Chapter in book

• Woodbury-Smith, Kara (2022). Legal Positivism: Inclusive. In Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Sellers, Mortimer & Kirste, Stephan Springer. 1-7.

Conference Paper

• Woodbury-Smith, K (2023), Inclusive Legal Positivism and Entailed Law, Jurisprudence Discussion Group. Oxford University, Oxford, England.
• Woodbury-Smith, K (2022), Incentivising Law, Durham Centre for Law and Philosophy Seminar Series. Durham, England.
• Woodbury-Smith, K (2022), Incentivising Law, Women in Legal Philosophy. Guildford, England.
• Cannilla, A, Crummey, C, Foran, M & Woodbury-Smith, K (2022), Book symposium: The Making of Constitutional Democracy, by Paolo Sandro, Edinburgh Legal Theory Spring Festival. Edinburgh, Scotland.
• Woodbury-Smith, K (2020), The Complication with Coercion, Newcastle Law School Seminar Series: Law, Politics, and the Power of Imagination. Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
• Woodbury-Smith, K (2019), Jurisprudence and the Complication with Coercion, Edinburgh Legal Theory Research Group Seminar Series. Edinburgh, Scotland.
• Woodbury-Smith, K (2018), Jurisprudence and the Complication with Coercion, Cambridge Legal Theory Symposium. Cambridge, England.
• Woodbury-Smith, K (2017), Law and Potential Coercion, Edinburgh Legal Theory Research Group Seminar Series. Edinburgh, Scotland.
• Woodbury-Smith, K (2016), Law, Coercion, and Conceptual Relations, Cambridge Doctoral Workshop in Legal Theory. Cambridge, England.
• Woodbury-Smith, K (2016), Law and Coercion: Comorbidity as a Conceptual Relations Framework, Graduate Students in Law. Ottawa, ON, Canada.
• Woodbury-Smith, K (2016), Law and Coercion:Comorbidity as a Conceptual Relations Framework, Ontario Legal Philosophy Partnership Graduate Conference. Hamilton, ON.

Journal Article

• Woodbury-Smith, Kara (2021). Legal normativity in Kenneth Einar Himma's Coercion and the Nature of Law. Revus: Journal for constitutional theory and philosophy of law (45): 7.
• Woodbury-Smith, Kara (2021). On Emad Atiq's Inclusive Anti-positivism. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 20(2): 211-219.
• Woodbury-Smith, Kara (2020). The Nature of Law and Potential Coercion. Ratio Juris 33(2): 223-240.