Endowed in 1621, the White's Chair at Oxford is perhaps the most prestigious chair of moral philosophy in the world. Held in recent times by J.L. Austin, R.M. Hare, Bernard Williams and James Griffin, the Chair provides leadership for Oxford's flourishing community of moral philosophers. Currently, around twenty moral philosophers are members of the Oxford Philosophy Faculty, and several more can be found in the Law Faculty and the Politics Department. Their interests range across the whole field, from ethics in ancient philosophy, through contemporary debates about objectivity, practical reason and normativity, to topical issues in applied ethics. Read more on the Philosophy Faculty website.

Oxford has been pre-eminent in the philosophy of law ever since H.L.A. Hart was elected to the long- established Chair of Jurisprudence in 1952. Home since then to many of the leading figures of modern legal theory (Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, John Finnis, Jim Harris ... ), Oxford has lately enjoyed a period of unparallelled jurisprudential growth, including the inauguration of a second Chair. Its current complement of fifteen or so philosophers of law (based mainly but not exclusively in the Law Faculty)includes several working at the interfaces with philosophy of language and metaphysics, as well as several whose work spills over into moral and political philosophy. Read more on the Legal Philosophy in Oxford website.