Gideon Yaffe

Gideon Yaffe is Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld Professor of Jurisprudence, Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Psychology at Yale. His research interests include the philosophy of law, particularly criminal law; the study of metaphysics including causation, free will and personal identity; and the study of intention and the theory of action. He has also written about the history of early modern philosophy. Professor Yaffe also collaborates with several neuroscientists to devise experiments that aim to be of legal and philosophical significance and has written about the relevance of the neuroscience of addiction to the criminal culpability of addicts. His 2010 book Attempts concerns the philosophical foundations of the law governing attempted crimes. His 2017 book The Age of Culpability concerns the philosophical grounds for leniency towards child criminals. He holds an A.B. in philosophy from Harvard and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford. Prior to joining Yale in 2012, he was a Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Southern California. He was also a member of the MacArthur Foundation's Law and Neuroscience Project. He has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Mellon Foundation, and he was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2015.