Staff profile

I joined Durham Law School in September 2018 and am a founding member of the Durham Centre for Law and Philosophy (est. 2020) and The Collective: Women in Legal Philosophy (est. 2023). 

I have a BA in Psychology from Hobart and William Smith Colleges (2004), an MA in Ethics and the Philosophy of Theology from King’s College, London (2007), and a PhD in Philosophy from McMaster University (2020) where I studied under the supervision of Wil Waluchow.

Whilst my philosophical interests are varied, I tend to write about general jurisprudence, the nature of coercion, how coercion and law conceptually relate, and how they should come together in legal practice.

• Ethics (meta and normative)
• General Jurisprudence
• Philosophy of constitutional law
• Philosophy of human rights law
• Philosophy of international law

• 2023: The Collective: Women in Legal Philosophy: Named to the Executive Committee
• 2022: Top Downloaded Article recognition by Wiley: ['The Nature of Law and Potential Coercion' (2020) was one of the most downloaded papers in the12 months following online publication.]
• 2021: Awarded the 'Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Staff Award,' Durham Law School:
• 2000: Invited presentations:
  1. 'Incentivising Law' | UCL Legal Theory Lecture Series. UCL Faculty of Laws, London, UK. 2 October 2023.

  2. 'Inclusive Legal Positivism and Entailed Law’ | Jurisprudence Discussion Group. Oxford University Faculty of Law, Oxford, UK. 9 February 2023. 

  3. ‘Incentivising Law' | Women in Legal Philosophy Workshop. Surrey Centre for Law and Philosophy, Surrey, UK. 9 December 2022. 

  4. ‘The Complication with Coercion’ | Newcastle Law School Seminar Series: Law, Politics, and the Power of Imagination. Newcastle University, Newcastle Law School. Online. May 2020. 

Chapter in book

• Woodbury-Smith, K. (2022). Legal Positivism: Inclusive. In M. Sellers, & S. Kirste (Eds.), Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (1-7). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_62-3

Conference Paper

• Woodbury-Smith, K. Law and Coercion: Comorbidity as a Conceptual Relations Framework.
• Woodbury-Smith, K. The Complication with Coercion.
• Woodbury-Smith, K. Incentivising Law.
• Woodbury-Smith, K. Law, Coercion, and Conceptual Relations.
• Woodbury-Smith, K. Law and Coercion:Comorbidity as a Conceptual Relations Framework.
• Woodbury Smith, K. Incentivising Law.
• Woodbury-Smith, K. Incentivising Law.
• Woodbury-Smith, K. Jurisprudence and the Complication with Coercion.
• Woodbury-Smith, K. Jurisprudence and the Complication with Coercion.
• Cannilla, A., Crummey, C., Foran, M., & Woodbury-Smith, K. Book symposium: The Making of Constitutional Democracy, by Paolo Sandro.
• Woodbury-Smith, K. (in press). Inclusive Legal Positivism and Entailed Law.
• Woodbury-Smith, K. Law and Potential Coercion.

Journal Article

• Woodbury-Smith, K. (2021). On Emad Atiq's Inclusive Anti-positivism. Journal of ethics & social philosophy, 20(2), 211-219. https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v20i2.1382
• Woodbury-Smith, K. (2021). Legal normativity in Kenneth Einar Himma's Coercion and the Nature of Law. Revus (Ljubljana, Online), Article 7. https://doi.org/10.4000/revus.7699
• Woodbury-Smith, K. (2020). The Nature of Law and Potential Coercion. Ratio Juris: An international journal of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law, 33(2), 223-240. https://doi.org/10.1111/raju.12288