Eric Shoemaker (Fall)

Postdoctoral Global Fellow
Canada
eas891@nyu.edu

Eric Shoemaker is a Postdoctoral Global Fellow at NYU. His research at NYU focuses on the democratic values embedded in the jury system, and how this might inform our evaluation of proposed reforms to the political system of democracies more broadly. Before coming to NYU, Eric has written extensively about democratic theory as it relates to Citizens’ Assemblies. He has won the Erik Olin Wright Prize from the Havens Wright Center for Social Justice, for his paper “A Justification for Political Random Selection Based on Democratic Equality”, in which he advocates for the replacement of political representation by elected officials with political representation by mini-publics composed of randomly selected citizens. He has published his research in several academic journals, including Public Affairs Quarterly, and presented his research at 18 conferences since 2021.

As a lecturer at the University of Toronto, Eric has taught many courses related to political philosophy, philosophy of law, bioethics, environmental ethics, and business ethics. Eric has also helped to develop the curriculum for the University of Toronto’s Embedded Ethics program, and delivered many guest lectures for classes in the University of Toronto’s Computer Science department to teach ethical concepts to computer scientists in ways that apply to their work. He has also acted as a judge for the Ontario Ethics Bowl - a competition among high schools throughout the province of Ontario to make and defend arguments about important ethical issues.

Eric holds a law degree from the University of Toronto, as well as a Masters of Arts and PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto.

Center Affiliation: Center for Law and Philosophy
Research Project: The Democratic Legitimacy & Political Meaning of Juries