The Trial of Socrates
In the year 399 BCE, Socrates was put to death by the most sophisticated and enlightened city the ancient world had ever seen. In this course we will study Socrates’ trial and execution from the point of view of both philosophy and law. From the point of view of philosophy, we will closely read Plato’s dialogues depicting his persecution and death: the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. In reading these dialogues, we will seek to understand the reasons why the Athenians persecuted Socrates, what this means for the fate of iconoclasts in all times and places, and what it says about the good life for a human being. From the point of view of law, we will compare the Athenian legal commitments at the center of Socrates’s trial—juries, religious liberty, and the death penalty—to modern America’s, through a week of law-school style reading of the leading United States Supreme Court cases on these issues.

Samuel Hage is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Tulane University. He received his BA from Middlebury College in 2016 and an MA from St. John’s College in 2020.
Jeffrey Hetzel is a practicing attorney and former law clerk for Judge Kevin Newsom of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He received his BA from Middlebury College in 2014 and his JD from Stanford Law School in 2020. He has litigated before the United States Supreme Court and argued before federal courts of appeals./