Andrea Dolcetti

Dr Andrea Dolcetti is a legal scholar particularly interested in the idea of sovereignty, the nature of legal norms, and issues of legal interpretation. Dr Dolcetti strongly values interdisciplinary research and enjoys collaborating with colleagues based in other jurisdictions. He has discussed his research at a number of Universities in the UK, Continental Europe, North America, and Australia. Before joining Macquarie Law School, Dr Dolcetti was a Lecturer and Research Fellow in Law at the University of Oxford. He remains a Research Associate of the Programme for the Foundations of Law and Constitutional Government in the Oxford Law Faculty.

At Oxford, Dr Dolcetti attained a Master of Studies in Legal Research and a DPhil in Law. During his doctorate, he co-convened the Oxford Jurisprudence Discussion Group as well as establishing and running a yearly law and philosophy seminar supported by, and hosted at, St. Hilda’s College.

Dr Dolcetti is a member of the Macquarie University Research Centre for Agency, Values, and Ethics (CAVE) and a Corresponding Fellow of the Tarello Institute for Legal Philosophy (University of Genoa). He is also a member of a research group on ‘Membership and Exclusion under Constitutions’ (International Association of Constitutional Law).

Dr Andrea Dolcetti’s research interests include: general jurisprudence; general theory of the state; legal interpretation and legal reasoning; constitutional theory; comparative law; history of political thought; and the epistemology of the social sciences.

Potential topics for Honours and HDR students:

Current problems in jurisprudence and theories of justice (including methodological problems)

Key ideas in legal and political theory (e.g., sovereignty, authority, legal validity, legal system, legal indeterminacy, legal positivism, natural law, the separation of powers, the Rule of Law)

Interpretation and judicial reasoning

Legal theory and legal history