Law Commons^™

The Dilemmas Of Post-Identity Organizing: Unmaking Feminist Ties In Southern Rwanda, Sarah E. Ryan

Sarah E Ryan

No abstract provided.

Safe Schools: The Threat From Within?, Donn Short

Donn Short

Safe school policies in many urban schools in Ontario have featured security guards, electronic surveillance, student identification tags, discipline, and zero tolerance. In 2000, the Ontario Ministry of Education passed the Safe Schools Act, which set out a list of offences that could trigger expulsion, suspension, and other disciplinary responses. Interestingly, it did not define safety. In a parallel move, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) adopted The Equity Foundation Statement in 1999 – a comprehensive commitment to equity and a rally against racism, homophobia, sexism, and oppression based on class. This article explores the disconnect between students’ and teachers’ …

Avant-Propos: Les Brevets Dans 'L'Économie De La Connaissance', Serge Gutwirth, Isabelle Stengers

Serge Gutwirth

La dynamique scientifico-industrielle associée à la biotechnologie est devenu un nouveau modèle pour la recherche en général. La responsabilité des Etats, assurer le développement d’une recherche publique, non directement asservie aux intérêts privés, a été transformée en responsabilité d’avoir à étendre cette dynamique au maximum de secteurs de recherche. C’est ce qu’on appelle « l’économie de la connaissance », c’est-à-dire le pilotage de la recherche par l’ « aval », le partenariat avec une industrie étant devenu la règle, et la prise de brevet un synonyme de réussite enviable. Comme dans le cas de la « déterritorialisation » des brevets, …

Creativity, Improvisation, And Risk: Copyright And Musical Innovation, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

The goals and beneficiaries of copyright frameworks have long been contested in varied contexts. Copyright is often treated as a policy tool that gives creators incentives to create new works. Incentive theories of copyright often emphasize appropriability, which enables copyright owners to ensure that they profit from their copyrighted works by exercising control over uses of, and access to, such works. Although copyright clearly imposes costs in the form of restrictions on access to copyright-protected works and inefficiencies in the form of deadweight loss, the benefits of copyright are thought by many to outweigh the costs. Copyright discussions may at …

Truly Sovereign At Last: C.B.C. Distribution V. Mlb Am And The Redefinition Of The Concept Of Baseball, Mitchell J. Nathanson

Mitchell J Nathanson

This article is the second in the author’s series examining the interplay between baseball and the law (the first being The Sovereign Nation of Baseball: Why Federal Law Does Not Apply To “America’s Game” And How It Got That Way, 16 Vill. Sports & Ent. L.J. 49 (2009)). The Sovereign Nation of Baseball provided the groundwork for this series by discussing how federal courts have historically deferred to those who have traditionally run Major League Baseball (the office of the Commissioner of Baseball as well as the cabal of club owners), bending the rules that would otherwise dictate the resolution …

Consulting The Architect When Problems Arise – The Divine Law, Brian M. Mccall

Brian M McCall

The Ghost In The Global War On Terror: Critical Perspectives And Dangerous Implications For National Security And The Law, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

In this Article, I set out to discuss the dangerous implications of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and, more generally, the at- tempts of the United States government to address notions of terror- ism and its effect on the safety of the United States and world citizens. I am primarily concerned with engaging a poststructuralist critique of the GWOT to strengthen legal discussions of terrorism and national security policy. While many in the legal academy have focused on particular issues relating to terrorism, I will engage in a macro-level analysis of the way the legal academy conceptualizes terrorism—not how …

Amos Lee's "Street Corner Preacher" Through Michel Foucault's Critique Of Scientific Knowledge: A Critique Of Legal Knowledge, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

This article will demonstrate that although students of the law, legal scholars, and practitioners rely on a relatively narrow body of “legal scholarship,” there are in fact sundry diverse sources of legal thought that deserve to be evaluated along with currently accepted legal scholarship. It will present arguments in favor of appreciating music as a unique and important source of legal commentary through which we might understand how people relate to the law—what I have called “coming to the law.” It will demonstrate that music can be uniquely transgressive and presents a powerful alternative to what Michel Foucault called “scientific …

To Share Or Not To Share: Cancer And What Teachers Should Tell Students About It, Robert A. Eckhart

Robert A. Eckhart

How much personal information to disclose to students is a fundamental question teachers have been asking themselves for decades. How much should teachers tell their students – a lot or a little? How should they tell them –in class, or face-to-face? Should the teacher only tell their students in a limited manner and then not answer questions, or should they be prepared to answer any and all questions the students might have? These are difficult questions, but if the teacher approaches the disclosure in the right way – avoiding irrelevant, overly negative, or offensive disclosures – it can be a …

Waiting For Justice

Dr. Saumya Uma

Insanity Defenses, Ken Levy, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Ken Levy

We explicate and evaluate arguments both for and against the insanity defense itself, different versions of the insanity defense (M'Naghten, Model Penal Code, and Durham (or Product)), the Irresistible Impulse rule, and various reform proposals.

Card Check Labor Certification: Lessons From New York, William A. Herbert

William A. Herbert

During the debate over the card check proposal in the Employee Free Choice Act of 2009 (EFCA), there has been a notable lack of discussion about New York’s fifty-year history and experience with card check certification. This article challenges and contradicts much of the prior scholarship and debate over EFCA by examining New York’s development and administration of card check procedures. The article begins with an overview of the history of New York public sector labor relations prior to the establishment of collective bargaining rights. As part of that historical overview, it examines the development of informal employee organization representation, …

Fernando Pessoa, Hermenêutica Jurídica E Retórica, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Um curioso aspecto do pensamento de Pessoa foi deixado por ele esparso, e o que parece totalmente ao acaso dos investigadores: o Direito. Em política, temos até um auto-retrato bastante completo, e a sucessão de textos que foi escrevendo, em prosa e em verso, facilmente nos permite reconstruir um percurso, a partir das suas bases ideológicas. Mas o que pensaria Pessoa do Direito? Neste caso, o “fingidor” não fingiu, não posou para a sua tão cuidadosamente preparada fama póstuma. Estamos, assim, perante um aspecto da sua vida mental que parece ter escapado à composição para um público (ainda que futuro), …

Desafios Constitucionais, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Há tentativas de fazer recuar as Constituições, de as “rever e romper”. Foi um sonho desde sempre acalentado pelos inimigos e falsos amigos das constituições modernas, sociais, democráticas, culturais, humanísticas, mas que hoje encontra terreno mais propício. Porque as forças sociais, as “pedras vivas”, estão mais vulneráveis. E os “Homens Livres” menos unidos e interventivos, pelo menos por agora. E a crise gera o medo, e o medo a vã esperança em mudanças radicais, que seriam afinal para pior. É assim que se vão incubando as ditaduras. Tal ocorre sobretudo nos países que, dominados por crises económicas e financeiras, se …

Universidade: Um Manifesto Pelo Sonho, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Por muito vilipendiado que seja, e é-o praticamente todos os dias por sociedades que recusam ser educadas e se comprazem na sua má-educação e incultura, além de por políticos impreparados, e mesmo por colegas não solidários, o Professor que o é por vocação está como Lutero: aqui está, aqui fica, não pode fazer de outra maneira. Só este professor por vocação e por sonho ainda faz a Escola valer. Até quando continuará a haver professores destes? E até onde irá a sua inadaptação com as condições em que tem de sobreviver, fazendo um papel que lhe não é reconhecido, tantas …

Concretizar A Constituição, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

O presente artigo pondera observações sobre a Constituição Portuguesa: é ela realmente normativa, ou inefectiva? Impõe-se uma análise das críticas ao statu quo constitucional: dirigem-se elas à Constituição em si ou apenas ao seu deficiente cumprimento? Finalmente, em que medida é que a Constituição, parecendo a alguns impecilho para a resolução da crise, contudo pode ser adjuvante para a sua superação.

Crítica Da Razão Jurídica, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

A razão jurídica racionalista fez-se abstraccionismo e dogmatismo e tornou-se legalismo. O Direito ficou, em muitos casos, empedernido e injusto. Abrir o Direito aos sentidos e aos sentimentos, na senda, por exemplo, de um Luis Alberto Warat, sendo fascinante e iconoclasta, não é tarefa fácil, se for empresa prudente. Precisamente porque os juristas, mesmo muitos dos mais radicias, se habituaram a certos limites, e mesmo na semiótica dos seus lugares, dos seus modos e vestes reconheceríamos sombras avessas às paixões. As quais podem ser, porém, um vício oposto ao racionalismo. O desafio é reinventar a razão jurídica sem o normativismo …

'Mass Of Madness': Jurisprudence In E.M. Forster's A Passage To India, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

Law-and-literature scholars have paid scant attention to E. M. Forster’s oeuvre, which abounds in legal information and which situates itself in a unique jurisprudential context. Of all his novels, A Passage to India (1924) interrogates the law most rigorously, especially as it implicates massive programs of ‘liberal’ imperialism and ‘humanitarian’ intervention, as well as less grand but equally dubious legal apparatuses – jail, bail, discovery, courtrooms – that police and pervert Chandrapore, the fictional Indian city in which the novel is set. The study of law in Anglo-India is particularly telling, if troubling, because India served as ‘a model for …

When ‘Digital Borders’ Meet ‘Surveilled Geographical Borders’. Why The Future Of Eu Border Management Is A Problem, Gloria Gonzalez-Fuster, Serge Gutwirth

Serge Gutwirth

The European Union (EU) has been powerfully supporting over the last decades the construction of so-called ‘digital borders’, composed of large-scale databases massively processing information on third-country nationals on the move, focusing on the examination of who crosses, wishes or needs to cross its external borders. Simultaneously, the EU has been placing under increased surveillance its ‘physical’ external borders, axing such surveillance on the scrutiny of whatever happens at such geographical space. Recent policy and technological developments appear to announce an interconnection of both modalities of ‘borders’, dangerously occurring at the edge of the EU legal framework for the insurance …

Mapping The Terrain Of Earth Jurisprudence: Landscape, Thresholds And Horizons, Anne Louise Schillmoller, Alessandro Pelizzon

Anne Schillmoller

Earth jurisprudence is an emerging area of law in which the integrity and health of ecosystems become a central concern of human legal and political institutions. In recent years, several countries have proposed constitutional reforms which mandate legal recognition of ecosystems’ ‘right to exist’. In September 2008 Ecuador became the first country in the world to declare constitutional ‘rights of nature’ and to codify a new system of environmental governance. The new laws grant citizens the right to sue on behalf of an ecosystem, even if not injured themselves. As one of the architects of this new legal framework observed, …

"For Every Wrong There Is A Remedy": Changing Law And Fleeing Wives In Nineteenth-Century America , Jerome J. Nadelhaft

Jerome J Nadelhaft

Wife abuse was much in the public eye in the nineteenth century. Throughout the century a large but unknown number of wives sought to preserve their lives by abandoning their homes. It was never easy, but at least some were not themselves abandoned by the courts, which dealt with the many issues raised: for example, whether relatives and neighbors were allowed to assist them and even encourage them to flee. Fortunately, the American Revolution inspired a judicial belief that problems could be solved. Equity courts flourished and the chancellors who presided felt comfortable acting where the law was silent. More …

Transnational Law: An Essay In Definition With A Polemic Addendum, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

What is transnational law? Various procedures and theories have emanated from this slippery signifier, but in general academics and legal practitioners who use the term have settled on certain common meanings for it. My purpose in this article is not to disrupt but to clarify these meanings by turning to literary theory and criticism that regularly address transnationality. Cultural and postcolonial studies are the particular strains of literary theory and criticism to which I will attend. To review “transnational law,” examining its literary inertia and significations, is the objective of this article, which does not purport to settle the matter …

Shakespeare's Place In Law-And-Literature, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

Nearly every Anglo-American law school offers a course called Law-and-Literature. Nearly all of these courses assign one or more readings from Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Why study Shakespeare in law school? That is the question at the heart of these courses. Some law professors answer the question in terms of cultivating moral sensitivity, fine-tuning close-reading skills, or practicing interpretive strategies on literary rather than legal texts. Most of these professors insist on an illuminating nexus between two supposedly autonomous disciplines. The history of how Shakespeare became part of the legal canon is more complicated than these often defensive, syllabus-justifying declarations allow. This …

The German Constitutional Court Judgement On Data Retention: Proportionality Overrides Unlimited Surveillance (Doesn't It ?), Katja De Vries, Rocco Bellanova, Paul De Hert, Serge Gutwirth

Serge Gutwirth

On 15 March 2006, the Data Retention Directive, demanding the retention of telecommunications data for a period of six months up to two years, was adopted. Since then, this seemingly straightforward directive has ‘generated’ quite an impressive number of court judgments. They range from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to the administrative (e.g. Germany and Bulgaria ) and constitutional courts (e.g. Romania ) of some Member-States. In particular, the judgment of the German Federal Constitutional Court, delivered on 2 March 2010, has already caught the attention of several commentators, from civil society, lawyers, journalists and politicians (cf. infra). In …

Zizek/Questions/Failing, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

In this article I am primarily concerned with presenting Slavoj Žižek3 as a legal theorist. Žižek has been a valuable contributor to critical theory and deserves a place in the pantheon of legal thinkers.

While his diverse writings are often relegated to other disciplines, they also position him as an important contributor to law and public discourse. I seek to illuminate how he mediates and interrogates the law by demonstrating how his scholarship is important to the lives of legal thinkers, questions of success and the law, capitalism, political practice, and terrorism. Because Žižek’s work is interdisciplinary and expansive, this …