Stanley Paulson

Stanley L. Paulson was born in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, on 16 May 1941. He grew up in Minneapolis and attended the University of Minnesota as an undergraduate, majoring in philosophy (B.A.). He took graduate degrees in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (M.A., Ph.D.) and a law degree at Harvard University (J.D.). 

He began his teaching career in the Department of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis in the fall of 1972. He was granted tenure at the University in 1978 and was appointed at the School of Law in 1983. He was appointed William Gardiner Hammond Professor of Law in 2000. 

Paulson was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of Law at the University of Uppsala (Sweden) on 23 January 2004 and an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of Law at the University of Kiel (Germany) on 14 July 2004. He was the recipient, in 2003-04, of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Research Prize for scholars in the humanities. Over the years, he has held a number of post-doctoral fellowships, including awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities (Washington, D.C.), the Fulbright Commission (Washington, D.C. and Vienna), the Max Planck Society (Munich), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Bonn - Bad Godesberg), and the Rockefeller Foundation (New York).  

Paulson’s specialty is European legal philosophy and legal theory, and he has written a great deal on the work of the legal philosopher and constitutional theorist Hans Kelsen. Paulson writes in English and in German, and his work has been translated into seven foreign languages.