Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Is There Really Anything Wrong With That? An Aristotelian Analysis Of Duty, Luke J. Mcgrath

Honors College Theses

In the iconic Seinfeld series finale, Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer find themselves in a peculiar legal predicament when they mock a crime rather than intervene to help the victim. The show’s commitment to portraying reality, even in its finale, vividly demonstrates the potential consequences of a society lacking the legal obligation to aid others. This comical incident raises a thought-provoking question about the legitimacy of duty-to-act laws in the United States. This thesis examines the application of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to the concept of duty-to-act laws and argues for the necessity and benefits of such laws in promoting a …

The Concepts Of Law And Morality In Castle In The Sky, Kiet T. Tran

CAFE Symposium 2023

This project examines the film Castle in the Sky by Studio Ghibli, directed by Hayao Miyazaki and how it uses “chaotic good”, “lawless evil” and “lawful good” being ideas rework from Future Boy Conan (1978) also directed by Hayao Miyazaki through an examination of the relationships between the characters.

The Consequence Of Final Causality: Competing Views Of Legal Teleology, Jonathan M. Dumdei

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

Philosophy of law and legal jurisprudence have received recent attention in the United States due to the significant change in the makeup of the Supreme Court. Historical understanding of the legal philosophies that have influenced the U.S. and the ancient principles upon which they are built must of necessity be properly assessed. This thesis proposes that Aquinas’s conception of Natural Law as the basis for legal teleology provides a superior grounding for American jurisprudence than the theories of legal positivism and critical legal theory due to the superiority of Natural Law’s integration of ultimate final causes. Through a survey of …

Can Animals Contract?, John Enman-Beech

Animal Studies Journal

Animals are, or are like persons, and so should not be treated as mere property. But persons are not just non-property; they are contractors. They interact with property and with other persons. This article analyses the possibilities for a range of animals to fit within market liberal society as contractors from a legal disciplinary perspective. Some animals are capable of contract-like relationships of reciprocal exchange, and can consent, in a certain sense, to parts of such relationships. However, the dangers of the contractual frame, which is used to legitimate exploitation, may exceed the benefits. Some scholars have begun to explore …

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Com 3045 (Communication, Law, And Free Speech), Donovan Bisbee

Open Educational Resources

From pornography to political speech, from the lewd to the libelous, and everywhere in between, the law is forever drawing lines that divide protected speech (what you can say in America) from unprotected speech (what you cannot say in America). This is an interdisciplinary course that draws on philosophical, legal, and rhetorical theories of communication to help explain how those lines are drawn. Readings include famous court cases involving freedom of speech, as well as political and philosophical writings on all sides of the free speech debate. This course is part of the required core for the Communication Studies Major, …

The Role Of Recognition In Kelsen's Account Of Legal Obligation And Political Duty, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Kelsen’s critique of absolute sovereignty famously appeals to a basic norm of international recognition. However, in his discussion of legal obligation, generally speaking, he notoriously rejects mutual recognition as having any normative consequence. I argue that this apparent contradiction in Kelsen's estimate regarding the normative force of recognition is resolved in his dynamic account of the democratic generation of law. Democracy is embedded within a modern political ethos that obligates legal subjects to recognize each other along four dimensions: as contractors whose mutually beneficial cooperation measures esteem by fair standards of contribution; as autonomous agents endowed with equal rights; as …

Against The Death Penalty, Charles Jessup

Student Research Submissions

My thesis is an argument against the death penalty. Given that public support for the death penalty in America is at a half-century low (according to the Pew Research Center), the timing could not be more appropriate to examine the death penalty. This research project had a two-step approach: first, ethical theory-based arguments for and against the death penalty were examined. Following that ethical theory-based examination, real-world statistics were applied to these theories to test where they stand in modern society. The findings contained in this research project point to a clear reality that the death penalty in America is …

Litigating The Limits Of Religion: Minority And Majority Concerns About Institutional Religious Liberty In India, Chad Bauman

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Western religious liberty advocates tend to focus on restrictions placed on minority religious communities, particularly when advocating abroad, that is, outside of the country in which they reside. In all contemporary democracies, however, adherents of religious majorities also express concerns about religious liberty. For this reason, the article considers both minority and majority concerns about institutional religious freedom in India. This essay provides an overview of religious freedom issues, with a particular focus on institutions, though, as I acknowledge, it is not always simple to distinguish individual from institutional matters of religious freedom. After describing various minority and majority concerns …

When Half The Neighborhood Is Missing: How To Overcome Systemic Poverty And Gentrification Following The Models Of Dudley Street And Mission Waco, Kevin A. Brown, Kevin A. Brown, Kevin A. Brown

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

Abstract

By following the examples of Mission Waco and The Dudley Street Initiative, it is possible to renew a sense of beloved community by changing the narrative of poverty and gentrification by rebuilding the village through empowering the poor and marginalized.

Mission Waco and The Dudley Street Initiative are comprehensive sustainable communities because they combine numerous social and economic interventions under developed strategic plans. The principal question that this dissertation seeks to answer is whether these models can be implemented in local communities to help overcome gentrification and poverty. Implementation can be successful if we can identify the problem, rethink …

Legal Purgatory: Why Some Animals Are Neither Persons Nor Property, Sharisse Kanet

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

All animals with non-borderline sentience are deserving of certain legal considerations independent of their use and relationship to human beings. That is, all sentient beings should have some rights. Given the current organization of the U.S. legal system, which divides all entities into property or persons, it is not surprising that animals are relegated to property status. I put forth a proposal to fix this whose central suggestion is that we create a third legal designation, legal patient, into which all non-person sentient animals (those which do not properly belong on either current category) would fit. These animals would receive …

Socrates And The Divine Mission Of Political Friendship, Ronahn I. Clarke

Honors Theses

Plato is widely regarded as an authoritarian political thinker on account of Socrates’ endorsement of rule by philosopher kings in the Republic. Yet the Republic should not be mistaken for a political treatise or the entirety of Socrates’ political theorizing. Each of the Socratic dialogues is concerned with the political endeavour of reorienting souls within communities of souls toward virtue via philosophical discussion. This project examines the Lysis, the Gorgias, the Symposium, the Republic, and other dialogues in the context of the philosophical mission Socrates establishes in the Apology. Socrates’ philosophical work expresses a …

The Issues Of State Independence In The Comments Of Thinkers, Mavluda Zulkandar Kizi Ergasheva

Scientific reports of Bukhara State University

The article is devoted to the analysis of views of enlightened thinkers on the state independence. At the beginning of the XX century, against the colonial oppression, the rule of the tyrannical system, encouraged the people to freedom and freedom, fought for the freedom of Motherland and national independence, the enlightened thinkers who died on this path have the irreplaceable civil courage and the restoration of the national independent state, mutual unity and cooperation, rich teachings on the need, legal democracy is as important in the realization of the noble goal as the construction of a state

Historical Formation Of The State Youth Policy Of Uzbekistan, Shukhrat Suvonovich Norov

Scientific reports of Bukhara State University

The article discusses the historical stage of development, and the formation of youth policy before and after Independence of Uzbekistan. The first and true state youth policy is compared. Institutions of civil society, their historical experience and role in supporting youth in the country over the years of Independence are also considered.

2011 Inamori Ethics Prize Speech: Democracy And Freedom Under Law: The Obligations Of Lawyers, Beatrice Mtetwa

The International Journal of Ethical Leadership

transcript

The Real Legal Realism, Michael S. Green

Michael S. Green

No abstract provided.

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Opening Statements In Trial: Reconsidering The Classical Canon Of Invention, Andrew Chandler

Undergraduate Theses

This analysis of 21 opening statements probes at current persuasive practices employed by trial attorneys through the lens of mainstream legal advice and an expanded definition of rhetorical invention – one which includes both discovery and creation. An evaluation of such practice reveals the utility, and furthermore the duty of the advocate, to draw upon an expanded realm of available arguments.

Guantánamo Bodies: Law, Media, And Biopower, Cary Federman, Dave Holmes

Cary Federman

The idea of the Guantánamo detainee as a Muselmann, the lowest order of concentration camp inmates, contains within it important implications for the new understanding of sovereignty in the era of Guantánamo, in an age of exception. The purpose of this article is to explain the status of those who are detained at Guantánamo Bay. Stated broadly, in assessing that status, we will emphasize the connection between the altered meaning of sovereignty that has accompanied the placing of prisoners in an American penal colony in Cuba and the biopolitical status of the prisoners who reside there. More particularly, we …

Collective Responsibility By Agreement, David Atenasio

Dissertations

It is often challenging to fairly distribute responsibility for harms that result from collective wrongdoing. Few object to blaming an agent for making a contribution to wrongdoing, but it is far more controversial to attribute fault to one agent for the contributions made by other participants in collective wrongdoing. I argue that we ought to distribute co-responsibility for collective wrongdoing only to those who authorize the offending actions, whether expressly or tacitly. By authorizing another to carry out wrongdoing on one's behalf, one becomes to blame for the unjustified harm caused by one's agent or agents. In this dissertation, I …

The 200,000 Cards Of Dimitri Yurasov: Further Reflections On Scholarship And Truth, Daniel A. Farber, Suzanna Sherry

Suzanna Sherry

No abstract provided.

The [Not So] Hidden Curriculum Of The Legalist State In The Book Of Lord Shang And The Han-Fei-Zi, Brandon R. King

Comparative Philosophy

This paper loosely draws some parallels between the experience of a subject in a so-called “Legalist” state with that of a contemporary student in Western schooling today. I explore how governance in the Book of Lord Shang and the Hanfeizi can be interpreted as pedagogy. Defining pedagogy in a relatively broad sense, I investigate the rationalizations for the existence of the state, the application of state mechanisms, and even the concentration of the ruler’s power all teach subjects habits, attitudes, and sensibilities in a similar fashion to what Philip Jackson called the “hidden curriculum”. Through his framework of “crowds, praise, …

Reflections On Tom Regan And The Animal Rights Movement That Once Was, Gary L. Francione

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Female Autonomy: An Analysis Of Privacy And Equality Doctrine For Reproductive Rights, Elizabeth Levi

Political Science Honors Projects

What is the constitutional basis for women’s equality? Recently, scholars have suggested that as the right to privacy has floundered against the political undoing of women's access to abortion, equal protection arguments have grown stronger. This thesis investigates the feminist utility and limits of the equality and privacy arguments. Taking liberal feminism and feminist legal theory as analytical lenses, I offer interpretations of gender discrimination, reproductive rights, and marriage equality case law. By this framework, I argue that while an equality argument is less inherently oppressive towards women than the privacy doctrine, equality doctrine has been constructed thus far to …

Problems With Using Statistics To Justify Institutional Policies, Justin Shin

Senior Projects Spring 2017

It is becoming increasingly common for institutions to use statistics to inform policy decisions. We should be prepared to ask ourselves what regulatory principles should be imposed on institutions that seek to justify certain policies through deference to a statistical analysis. This paper will examine the difficulties that come with using statistics to justify actions, and argue that certain standards of transparency and verifiability should be expected from any institution that seeks to involve a statistical analysis in the formation of policies. I will first use Market Share Liability, an established use of statistics, to draw out what responsibilities an …

The Edict Of King Gälawdéwos Against The Illegal Slave Trade In Christians: Ethiopia, 1548 -- Featured Source, Habtamu M. Tegegne

The Medieval Globe

This study explores the relationship between documentary-legal prescriptions of slavery and actual practice in late medieval Ethiopia. It does so in light of a newly discovered edict against the enslavement of freeborn Christians and the commercial sale of Christians to non-Christian owners, issued in 1548 by King Gälawdéwos. It demonstrates that this edict emerged from a dramatic and violent encounter between the neighboring Sultanate of Adal, which was supported by Muslim powers, and the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, which had the support of expanding European powers in the region. The edict was therefore issued to reaffirm and clarify the principles …

Land And Tenure In Early Colonial Peru: Individualizing The Sapci, "That Which Is Common To All", Susan E. Ramirez

The Medieval Globe

This article compares and contrasts pre-Columbian indigenous customary law regarding land possession and use with the legal norms and concepts gradually imposed and implemented by the Spanish colonial state in the Viceroyalty of Peru in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Natives accepted oral histories of possession going back as many as ten generations as proof of a claim to land. Indigenous custom also provided that a family could claim as much land as it could use for as long as it could use it: labor established rights of possession and use. The Spanish introduced the concept of private property …

The Future Of Aztec Law, Jerome A. Offner

The Medieval Globe

This article models a methodology for recovering the substance and nature of the Aztec legal tradition by interrogating reports of precontact indigenous behavior in the works of early colonial ethnographers, as well as in pictorial manuscripts and their accompanying oral performances. It calls for a new, richly recontextualized approach to the study of a medieval civilization whose sophisticated legal and jurisprudential practices have been fundamentally obscured by a long process of decontextualization and the anachronistic applications of modern Western paradigms.

Editor's Introduction To "Legal Worlds And Legal Encounters" -- Open Access, Elizabeth Lambourn

The Medieval Globe

This introduction presents and draws together the articles and themes featured in this special issue of The Medieval Globe, “Legal Worlds and Legal Encounters.”

The Prospects For Change: The Question Of Justice In A Law & Society Framework, Michael W. Raphael

Graduate Student Publications and Research

What is the law and society framework and where has it gotten us? A student in a classroom might raise their hand and offer "understanding legal pluralism" as a possible answer. However, the conceptual problem with legal pluralism is the coexistence of potentially conflicting bases of justification. Given this, desiring to understand how the law shapes the structural underpinnings of whichever "legal" phenomena and its "ongoing transformation", is nevertheless an immense achievement that stops short of its underlying goal – the achievement of human dignity through human rights. For example, to talk about 'multi-stakeholder consultations' and other pithy phrases that …

Defeating Naturalism: Defending And Reformulating Plantinga's Eaan, Tyler D. Mcnabb

Eleutheria: John W. Rawlings School of Divinity Academic Journal

Abstract: During the past two decades, Alvin Plantinga has formulated an argument against naturalism that focuses on naturalism’s acceptance of contemporary evolutionary theory. Plantinga argues that given naturalism and evolution, our cognitive faculties have been developed to produce beliefs that meet the Darwinian requirement of survival and reproduction. Plantinga argues that accepting this will lead a naturalist to have a defeater for all of their beliefs, including their belief in naturalism. In this paper, I survey and respond to two types of objections that have been given as a response to Plantinga’s argument. The first objection that I interact with …

Freedom, Benefit And Understanding: Reflections On Laurence Claus’S Critique Of Authority, John Finnis

San Diego Law Review

With wide-ranging and illuminating determination, Law’s Evolution and Human Understanding offers a refutation of the illusion of authority. No one, it rightly contends, has the right to be obeyed. Still less, as it correctly says, do any persons have the right that their say so be obeyed because they said so. Given the book’s stipulative definition of “authority,” these truths entail that authority is an illusion, and provide some important premises for a plausible further conclusion or pair of conclusions: it is harmful, both in practice and in theory, to say that some person or body has authority (“the rule …