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Full-Text Articles in Law

Legal Orientalism, Teemu Ruskola Oct 2002

Legal Orientalism, Teemu Ruskola

Michigan Law Review

Fifty years ago comparative law was a field in search of a paradigm. In the inaugural issue of the American Journal of Comparative Law in 1952, Myres McDougal remarked unhappily, "The greatest confusion continues to prevail about what is being compared, about the purposes of comparison, and about appropriate techniques." In short, there seemed to be very little in the field that was not in a state of confusion. Two decades later, referring to McDougal's bleak assessment, John Merryman saw no evidence of progress: "few comparative lawyers would suggest that matters have since improved." And only a few years ago, …


How Is Constitutional Law Made?, Tracey E. George, Robert J. Pushaw Jr. May 2002

How Is Constitutional Law Made?, Tracey E. George, Robert J. Pushaw Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Bismarck famously remarked: "Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made." This witticism applies with peculiar force to constitutional law. Judges and commentators examine the sausage (the Supreme Court's doctrine), but ignore the messy details of its production. Maxwell Stearns has demonstrated, with brilliant originality, that the Court fashions constitutional law through process-based rules of decision such as outcome voting, stare decisis, and justiciability. Employing "social choice" economic theory, Professor Stearns argues that the Court, like all multimember decisionmaking bodies, strives to formulate rules that promote both rationality and fairness (p. 4). Viewed through the lens …


Pragmatism Regained, Christopher Kutz Jan 2002

Pragmatism Regained, Christopher Kutz

Michigan Law Review

Jules Coleman's The Practice of Principle serves as a focal point for current, newly intensified debates in legal theory, and provides some of the deepest, most sustained reflections on methodology that legal theory has seen. Coleman is one of the leading legal philosophers in the Anglo-American world, and his writings on tort theory, contract theory, the normative foundations of law and economics, social choice theory, and analytical jurisprudence have been the point of departure for much of the most interesting activity in the field for the last three decades. Indeed, the origin of this book lies in Oxford University's invitation …


Horrible Holmes, Mathias Reimann Jan 2002

Horrible Holmes, Mathias Reimann

Michigan Law Review

Holmes has kept scholars busy for most of a century, and the resulting volume of literature about him is staggering. In that last twenty years along, we have been blessed with four biographies, four symposia, three new collections of his works, two volumes of essays, and various monographs, not to mention a multitude of free-standing law review articles. Since life is short, everyone who adds to the deluge, including Albert Alschuler with his new book, bears a heavy responsibility to make the expenditure of trees, library space, and reading time worthwhile. Does Law Without Values fulfill that responsibility? Despite the …