It is a privilege to take up the editorship of Law and Philosophy. We do so with appreciation for what the journal has become and a clear sense of what we have inherited: a periodical that, over more than four decades, has been a flagship journal at the meeting point of law and philosophy. The community the journal serves today is a genuinely global one, its contributors and readers spread across continents and legal traditions.

We take over the role of Editors-in-Chief from Kimberly Kessler Ferzan and John Oberdiek, who step down after more than sixteen years with the journal – first as Associate Editors and, since 2013, at its helm. It is hard to overstate what they have given Law and Philosophy and the broader jurisprudence community: a stewardship that, issue after issue, year after year, kept the journal’s standards high even as its reach widened. We are relieved, and delighted, that they are not leaving us altogether: both now join the Editorial Board, where their counsel will remain close at hand. We thank them, as colleagues and as friends, for their service.

Law and Philosophy was founded in 1982. At the time, it was one of the only journals devoted to the philosophy of law. Most work in the field was scattered across law reviews and general philosophy journals, with no natural home. Law and Philosophy gave it one and opened the way for the many other legal theory and legal philosophy journals that have followed in its path.

The field has changed a great deal in the intervening decades, and the journal has changed with it. Law and Philosophy is a philosophy journal about law, broadly construed. Legal philosophy has its own enduring questions, about the nature of law, legal normativity, the ethics of punishment, the structure of private law, etc. Yet, it also sits within practical philosophy more broadly, drawing on and contributing to moral and political philosophy, as well as other branches such as metaethics, philosophy of action, and epistemology. As the late Joseph Raz warned, ‘The institutional division between philosophy and law departments is of course understandable, perhaps even necessary. But it is allowed to breed intellectual dislocation and isolation – a cutting off of legal philosophy from its intellectual home in philosophy’.Footnote 1Law and Philosophy reflects this understanding of the field and fosters the development of legal philosophy and philosophically oriented legal theory across institutional divides.

In this spirit, we have revised the journal’s statement of Aims and Scope, which had stood largely unchanged since 1982:

Law and Philosophy publishes work of the highest quality at the intersection of philosophy and law, broadly construed. Its scope includes general jurisprudence as well as the philosophical analysis of particular areas of law (such as constitutional, criminal, or private law); legal questions pursued through metaphysics, ethics, political or social morality, epistemology, or other branches of philosophy; and philosophical work bearing on matters relevant or adjacent to law. In addition to research articles, the journal publishes book reviews, symposia, review essays, comments, and special issues.

This revision is meant to reflect continuity with the journal’s original mission, and the field’s evolution since. Readers should expect no departure in the character or quality of what we publish.

A journal is only as strong as its members, and we are fortunate in ours. We are very grateful to our Associate Editors, Talia Fisher, Deborah Hellman, Erin Kelly, Sandra Mayson, Ezequiel Monti, Robert Mullins, Jonathan Parry, and Sandy Steel, and our Book Review Editor, Crescente Molina, for their contributions to the work of the journal. We are delighted to welcome our new Associate Editors, Madhav Khosla, George Letsas, and Rebecca Stone. Finally, we want to thank the two Associate Editors stepping down as we begin, Lorenzo Zucca and David Plunkett, for their service and their judgment.

The journal’s Editorial Board continues to reflect the range and diversity of the work of the journal as well as its role as one of the preeminent journals in the field globally. We are indebted to the dozens of legal philosophers who have served on it over the years, whose refereeing and counsel shape the journal issue by issue. We will continue to make some changes to the Board, gradually bringing in a new generation of legal philosophers alongside those who have long sustained it.

We also thank all our authors and referees, whose judgment the journal is, in the end, made of, and we invite your submissions, your criticism, and your proposals for special issues.

This transition falls on the cusp of the journal’s forty-fifth year. We will continue to steward the legacy of the journal and its role in sustaining and advancing legal philosophy. In that spirit, we are also glad to announce a partnership with University College London (UCL) to manage a new named lecture: the Ronald Dworkin Annual Lecture, to be held in London by UCL Laws. We are grateful to UCL and proud that a lecture honoring a figure so central to the field will appear in these pages.