About

Professor Brian Bix is a faculty member in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on legal philosophy, philosophy of language, and moral and political philosophy. As a professor, he is involved in teaching and scholarly activities related to these areas, contributing to the understanding and development of philosophical perspectives on law, language, and ethics.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Law
• Epistemology
• Philosophy
• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Mechanical engineering
• Law and economics

Selected publications

• Revisiting the Debate between Joseph Raz, Robert Alexy, and Eugenio Bulygin

  Ratio Juris · 2026-04-07

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Ratio Juris is making available the English translation of a debate between Joseph Raz, Robert Alexy, and Eugenio Bulygin that had been previously published by Marcial Pons in Spanish in 2007. The debates focus on Raz's distinctive view of conceptual analysis and his argument that it is central to theories about the nature of law. The exchanges with Alexy and Bulygin focus on how open and “parochial” our concepts, including our concept of law, really are, and the connections between legal theory and legal practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Fairness in contract law: an impossibility theorem?

  European Journal of Law and Economics · 2025-10-23 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Scholars have long debated whether contract law should prioritize maximizing efficiency and social welfare or, instead, prioritize justice, fairness and other deontological values. The debate is partly prescriptive (what should we try to do with contract law rules) and partly conceptual (how should we understand contract law). This article surveys central positions in this debate, distinguishing between the corrective and redistributive functions of contract law and between doing justice between the parties and more systemic effects. It highlights an impossibility theorem that underscores the self-defeating nature of redistributive policies in price-based contractual relationships, using a numerical example and two policy interventions to illustrate the inherent trade-offs.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The American and Scandinavian Legal Realists on the Nature of Norms

  De lege : · 2025-10-08 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• El Derecho bajo la lupa analítica

  2025-07-23

  book
  PublisherDOI

• EL WITTGENSTEIN DE HART

  2025-07-23

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Relational Justice and Family Agreements

  Law and Philosophy · 2025-12-29

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Premarital agreements have always been controversial, and the change to much greater enforceability has not much changed their reception. Many of the criticisms premarital agreements evoke seem connected to the concerns Hanoch Dagan and Avihay Dorfman raise in their book, Relational Justice . That book’s emphasis on our obligation of relational justice to those with whom we interact and transact goes a long way to explaining many of the current doctrinal constraints on premarital agreements. One question this article investigates is whether significantly one-sided substantive terms in such agreements might nonetheless be consistent with both relational justice and general family law policy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Limits of Efficiency in Regulatory Contract Law

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• What Does Law Claim?

  2025-04-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract According to Joseph Raz, law, by its nature, claims to be a moral authority (though he also argued that law often fails to justify that claim). There is an obvious attraction to Raz’s position: it seems to make sense of legal officials telling us what to do, and many individuals seeming to believe that they should do what the law says just because the law says so. This chapter first briefly considers why some theorists are troubled by the assertion that law claims—that it claims anything. Those commentators argue that law is not the sort of thing that should be said to be making claims. However, given that we attribute claims or actions to other abstract or collective bodies, the idea of law’s claims should not concern us unduly. The chapter’s main focus is evaluating the competing views, that legal propositions must be understood in moral terms (as Raz’s approach appears to do), and that legal propositions should be understood as empirical predictions of official action (as some American legal realists assert). The third alternative presented here portrays law as offering a sui generis form of normativity. Legal rules simply create “legal obligations” and give us “legal reasons” to act in specified ways. This alternative faces its own set of challenges, some of which are outlined.

  PublisherDOI

• On Law and Truth (2024 Lisbon Legal Theory Annual Lecture)

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Fairness in Contract Law: An Impossibility Theorem

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Adam Tomkins

  University of Glasgow

  10 shared

• Torben Spaak

  7 shared

• Brian Leiter

  5 shared

• Stephan Kirste

  University of Salzburg

  5 shared

• Robert Alexy

  4 shared

• Klaus Günther

  Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom

  4 shared

• К Лейтер

  North-West Institute of Management

  4 shared

• Евгеньевич Дмитрий

  Institute of State and Law

  4 shared