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Full-Text Articles in Law
Postracial Remedies, Derrick Darby, Richard E. Levy
Postracial Remedies, Derrick Darby, Richard E. Levy
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence is decidedly postracial. The Court has restricted the Equal Protection Clause to intentional discrimination by the government, concluding that the Constitution does not prohibit private acts of discrimination and rejecting challenges based on disparate impact, even when rigorous statistical analysis indicates that race is likely a factor. It has held that remedying the effects of past societal discrimination is an insufficient basis for race-specific remedies such as affirmative action. It has also ended remedies of this sort designed to combat previous state-sponsored racial discrimination, such as court-ordered desegregation measures in the schools and the …
Legal Pluralism In Tort Law Theory: Balancing Instrumental Theories And Corrective Justice, Benjamin Shmueli
Legal Pluralism In Tort Law Theory: Balancing Instrumental Theories And Corrective Justice, Benjamin Shmueli
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Unified-monistic theories of tort law focus on a single goal, usually corrective justice, distributive justice, or optimal deterrence. Unlike these approaches, mixedpluralistic theories attempt to balance between various goals of tort law by integrating several of the considerations underlying these different goals. These theories of legal pluralism reflect ideological diversity, in this case between different theories of the same legal system. This Article discusses the challenge of legal pluralism to settle the possible collision between different goals of tort law within the framework of tort law theory. Starting from a position of support for the mixed-pluralistic thesis, this Article first …
Theorizing American Freedom, Anthony O'Rourke
Theorizing American Freedom, Anthony O'Rourke
Michigan Law Review
Some intellectual concepts once central to America's constitutional discourse are, for better and worse, no longer part of our political language. These concepts may be so alien to us that they would remain invisible without carefully reexamining the past to challenge the received narratives of America's constitutional development. Should constitutional theorists undertake this kind of historical reexamination? If so, to what extent should they be willing to stray from the disciplinary norms that govern intellectual history? And what normative aims can they reasonably expect to achieve by exploring ideas in our past that are no longer reflected in the Constitution's …
Rawls And Reparations, Martin D. Carcieri
Rawls And Reparations, Martin D. Carcieri
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
In the past two years, four related events have sharpened debates on race in the U.S.: President Obama's election, the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, that Court's ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano, and the arrest of Obama's friend, Harvard professor Henry Gates. The President has spoken of a "teaching moment" arising from these events. Moreover, his writings, speeches and lawmaking efforts illustrate the contractual nature of Obama's thinking. The President (and all concerned citizens) should thus find useful an analysis of racial policy and justice in light of the work of John Rauls. Rawls may …
On Justitia, Race, Gender, And Blindness, I. Bennett Capers
On Justitia, Race, Gender, And Blindness, I. Bennett Capers
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Essay focuses on Justitia's more problematic attributes. Like Justitia's blindfold, which has been described as "the most enigmatic" of her traits. Is the blindfold merely emblematic of Justitia's purported impartiality, her claim to algorithmic justice? As law professor Costas Douzinas and art historian Lynda Nead have asked, does the blindfold enable Justitia "to avoid the temptation to see the face that comes to the law and put the unique characteristics of the concrete person before the abstract logic of the institution"? Or does the blindfold signify something more, a second sight of sorts? Maybe that Justitia, unable to see, …
Meaning's Edge, Love's Priority, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Meaning's Edge, Love's Priority, Patrick Mckinley Brennan
Michigan Law Review
The story is told of an American wending his way through the British Museum. Reaching the Rosetta Stone, he reached right over the railing, touched the scarred slab, and lamented: "It doesn't feel meaningful." Whereupon an old Briton was heard to mumble: "The poor American's got this old thing confused with the Blarney Stone." A bully presses his case, but meaning is much more modest. Powerless to insist upon itself, meaning lies in wait of discovery. What distinguishes the Rosetta Stone from other rocks of the same kind and size is that it was someone's - or rather a group's …
Trade And Inequality: Economic Justice And The Developing World, Frank J. Garcia
Trade And Inequality: Economic Justice And The Developing World, Frank J. Garcia
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article attempts to lay the foundation for such a framework in the area of international trade law. More specifically, this Article develops the argument that the principle of special and differential treatment, a key element of the developing world's trade agenda, plays a central role in satisfying the moral obligations that wealthier states owe poorer states as a matter of distributive justice. Seen in this light, the principle of special and differential treatment is more than just a political accommodation: it reflects a moral obligation stemming from the economic inequality among states.
Farewell To An Idea? Ideology In Legal Theory, David Charny
Farewell To An Idea? Ideology In Legal Theory, David Charny
Michigan Law Review
In 1956, Morocco inaugurated a constitutional democratic polity on the Western model. Elections were to be held, and political parties formed, with voters to be registered by party. The Berbers, however, did not join the parties as individual voters. Each Berber clan joined their chosen party as a unit. To consecrate (or, perhaps, to accomplish) the clan's choice, a bullock was sacrificed. These sacrificial rites offer a useful parable about the relationship between law and culture. The social order imposed by law depends crucially on the "culture" of the participants in the system - their habits, dispositions, views of the …
Transcendental Deconstruction, Transcendent Justice, J. M. Balkin
Transcendental Deconstruction, Transcendent Justice, J. M. Balkin
Michigan Law Review
A meaningful encounter between two parties does not change only the weaker or the stronger party, but both at once. We should expect the same from any encounter between deconstruction and justice. It might be tempting for advocates of deconstruction to hope that deconstruction would offer new insights into problems of justice, or, more boldly, to assert that "the question of justice" can never be the same after the assimilation of deconstructive insights. But, as a deconstructionist myself, I am naturally skeptical of all such blanket pronouncements, even - or perhaps especially - pronouncements about the necessary utility and goodness …
Equality And Partiality, Daniel A. Cohen
Equality And Partiality, Daniel A. Cohen
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Equality and Partiality by Thomas Nagel
The Quest For Justice, James S. Fishkin
The Quest For Justice, James S. Fishkin
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Affirmative Action and Justice: A Philosophical and Constitutional Inquiry by Michel Rosenfeld
Justice, Gender And The Family, Christine A. Pagac
Justice, Gender And The Family, Christine A. Pagac
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Justice, Gender and the Family by Susan Moller Okin
Justice In The International System, Thomas M. Franck, Steven W. Hawkins
Justice In The International System, Thomas M. Franck, Steven W. Hawkins
Michigan Journal of International Law
"Justice," Rawls claims in A Theory of Justice," is the first virtue of social institutions…" The principles of justice of which Rawls speaks, however, except for a brief excursion, "apply only within the borders of a nation-state." Our purpose is to see whether justice is also the first virtue of the international system, the social institutions of the community of nations. More specifically, is justice the definitive virtue by which to judge international law? This article seeks to answer those questions by examining the concept of justice as developed by various theorists, culminating in the contemporary Rawlsian theory of …
Arguing About Rights, Charles M. Yablon
Defending Equality: A View From The Cave, James S. Fishkin
Defending Equality: A View From The Cave, James S. Fishkin
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality by Michael Walzer
How Radical Is Liberalism?, Virginia L. Warren
How Radical Is Liberalism?, Virginia L. Warren
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Justice, Equal Opportunity, and the Family by James S. Fishkin
Injustice, Inequality And Ethics, Michigan Law Review
Injustice, Inequality And Ethics, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Injustice, Inequality, and Ethics by Robin Barrow
Reason And Law, George C. Christie
Reason And Law, George C. Christie
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Justice, Law, and Argument: Essays in Moral and Legal Reasoning by Chaim Perelman
Knowledge And Politics, Phillip Soper
Knowledge And Politics, Phillip Soper
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Knowledge and Politics by Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Cahn: The Sense Of Injustice, Michigan Law Review
Cahn: The Sense Of Injustice, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Review of THE SENSE OF INJUSTICE. By Edmond N. Cahn.
Jurisprudence On Parade, Hessel E. Yntema
Jurisprudence On Parade, Hessel E. Yntema
Michigan Law Review
Jurisprudence is part of the pageant that makes history. This is a truism that, it may be added, obtains irrespective of the view held as to the significance of general legal theory. To some, the constructs of jurisprudence may seem but laggard symbols of more vital facts and trends. The degree of the lag exhibited by the more celebrated of such constructs may suggest to an anthropologically-minded observer, such as Thurman Arnold, that the apparent function of jurisprudence in the present social climate is neither to represent reality nor to control the administration of justice, but rather by the magic …
Inquiry Concerning Justice, Floyd R. Mechem
Inquiry Concerning Justice, Floyd R. Mechem
Michigan Law Review
Justice, said Daniel Webster, "is the greatest interest of man on earth." Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist, declared "Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It has ever been, and ever will be, pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit."