This is the End: Learning from Failure in Law and Governance

March 3 – April 21, 2017 / Cambridge, MA

The reading group, “This is the End: Learning from Failure in Law and Governance”, was organized by the IGLP Residential Fellows in the Spring Term of 2017. The group explored strategies to comprehend failure – personal failure, that of others in whom we invest and from whom we inherit, and of systems in which we believe. The group was particularly interested in the methods and politics of how we can disentangle agency in, and recover responsibility for, failure, in ways that are sensitive to individual vulnerability in the face of complexity and disorder. The group drew on the tools and traditions of tragic – and more broadly dramatic – analysis to explore failure in different forms, from revolution to law, and expertise to governance.