Manish Oza

About

I’m an Assistant Professor at the University of Western Ontario, Faculty of Law, cross-appointed to Philosophy.

My main research project is about the law and political philosophy of voluntary associations, such as clubs, churches, unions and political parties, and how they intersect with the authority of the state. I’ve written about the legal personality of groups, fairness in associations and when courts should resolve religious disputes. Building on this work, I’m particularly interested in exploring associative forms of ownership, as well as political projects that involve them.

My dissertation was in philosophy of logic, focusing on the relation of logic to thought. I argued that a basic grasp of logical rules is essential to thinking, and that this explains the sense in which logic is normative.

Drawing on this background, I’m also working on legal reasoning. I’ve written about how legal fictions work and the rationality of fundamental legal changes, such as revolutions and constitutional reform. I’m interested in how legal reasoning can be governed by the same norms as other reasoning, but also constrained by its role in solving disputes.

For full details of my work, see my academic CV.

Law and Language project

With my colleague Andy Yu, I co-direct an interdisciplinary speaker series on law and language, featuring speakers from philosophy, law, linguistics and other disciplines. In 2024, we organized a workshop called “New Directions in Law and Language”.

Here is an interview I conducted with Lindsay Borrows on Indigenous law and language.

Work in Progress

Email me if you’d like to see a draft.

• A paper about treating non-sentient entities as legal persons
• A paper about how legal reasoning differs from ordinary reasoning

Teaching

Courses I teach or have taught:

• Property Law
• Administrative Law
• Jurisprudence (reading list)
• Julius Alexander Isaac Moot (coach)
• Topics in Philosophy of Law: Pluralism (syllabus)