Law Commons^™

December 29, 2020: What Democrats Can Learn From Trump's Narrow Loss, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “What Democrats Can Learn From Trump's Narrow Loss“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

What Can Democrats Learn From Trump’S 2020 Performance?, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

December 25, 2020: Merry Christmas To All, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Merry Christmas to All“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

December 16, 2020: This Week's Column--The Future Of The Supreme Court, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “This week's column--the future of the Supreme Court“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

What Will A Post-Trump U.S. Supreme Court Look Like? It Might Not Be All That Bad For Liberals, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

December 2, 2020: Reform The Electoral College, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Reform the Electoral College“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Electoral College Is Dangerously Vulnerable To Manipulation. It's Time To Fix It, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Aristotle And Animal Law: The Case For Habeas Corpus For Animals, Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln Iv

Student Scholarship

This article is divided into three substantive sections. Section I delineates Aristotle’s theory of the soul as laid out in De Anima. Section II defines habeas corpus as a legal concept and demonstrates under what circumstances it should be granted. Section III applies Aristotle’s theory of the soul as a structure whereby animals could be granted habeas corpus rights.

This Year’S Divided Electorate Is A Reminder Of Why We Need Workable, Governing Majorities, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

November 18, 2020: We Need A National Party, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “We Need a National Party“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

November 10, 2020: How I Reacted Last Time To Demands For Recounts, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “How I Reacted Last Time to Demands for Recounts“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

November 8, 2020: Joe Biden Wins, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Joe Biden Wins“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Alito, Conservative Justices Are Fighting Old Ghosts In Pa. Count All The Ballots, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

November 5, 2020: Count All The Pennsylvania Ballots--Conservative Justices Are Seeing The Ghost Of Bush V. Gore, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Count All the Pennsylvania Ballots--Conservative Justices Are Seeing the Ghost of Bush v. Gore“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

November 4, 2020: Looks Like President Trump Was Reelected, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Looks Like President Trump Was Reelected“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

October 27, 2020: Will The Supreme Court Survive This Treachery?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Will the Supreme Court Survive This Treachery?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Court-Packing In 2021: Pathways To Democratic Legitimacy, Richard Mailey

Seattle University Law Review

This Article asks whether the openness to court-packing expressed by a number of Democratic presidential candidates (e.g., Pete Buttigieg) is democratically defensible. More specifically, it asks whether it is possible to break the apparent link between demagogic populism and court-packing, and it examines three possible ways of doing this via Bruce Ackerman’s dualist theory of constitutional moments—a theory which offers the possibility of legitimating problematic pathways to constitutional change on democratic but non-populist grounds. In the end, the Article suggests that an Ackermanian perspective offers just one, extremely limited pathway to democratically legitimate court-packing in 2021: namely, where a Democratic …

October 21, 2020: Get Rid Of The Filibuster--But Don't Pack The Court--Capital-Star, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Get Rid of the Filibuster--but don't pack the Court--Capital-Star“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

We Need Independent Judicial Review. We Don’T Need The Filibuster. Let's Get Rid Of It, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

October 18, 2020: Anti-Racism, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “ Anti-Racism“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The One Religious Question That Amy Coney Barrett Shouldn’T Have To Answer, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

October 7, 2020: The One Religious Question Barrett Should Not Have To Answer, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The One Religious Question Barrett Should Not Have to Answer“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

October 3, 2020: It Is Fitting That President Trump Contracted The Virus, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “It Is Fitting that President Trump Contracted the Virus“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Metaphysics & Morals In Canadian Criminal Justice: A Pragmatic Analysis Of The Conflict Between Neuroscience And Retributive Folk Psychology, Sarah Greenwood

LLM Theses

The retributive justification of Canadian criminal law contains several assumptions about human nature that conflicts with what neuroscience has established regarding human behavior and the function of rationality. Interdisciplinary discourse on this conflict between law and neuroscience has unnecessarily implicated the free will debate and is further stagnated by epistemic cultural differences between the two disciplines. To avoid these roadblocks, this thesis applies the methodological principles of pragmatic philosophy. Rather than asking which description of human nature is true, pragmatic inquiry focuses on the difference either would make in practice. This analysis reveals that retributive folk psychology in practice causes …

A Truce In Criminal Law's Distributive Principle Wars?, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

Crime-control utilitarians and retributivist philosophers have long been at war over the appropriate distributive principle for criminal liability and punishment, with little apparent possibility of reconciliation between the two. In the utilitarians’ view, the imposition of punishment can be justified only by the practical benefit that it provides: avoiding future crime. In the retributivists’ view, doing justice for past wrongs is a value in itself that requires no further justification. The competing approaches simply use different currencies: fighting future crime versus doing justice for past wrongs.

It is argued here that the two are in fact reconcilable, in a fashion. …

Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall—Biased Impartiality, Appearances, And The Need For Recusal Reform, Zygmont A. Pines

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The article focuses on a troubling aspect of contemporary judicial morality.

Impartiality—and the appearance of impartiality—are the foundation of judicial decision-making, judicial morality, and the public’s trust in the rule of law. Recusal, in which a jurist voluntarily removes himself or herself from participating in a case, is a process that attempts to preserve and promote the substance and the appearance of judicial impartiality. Nevertheless, the traditional common law recusal process, prevalent in many of our state court systems, manifestly subverts basic legal and ethical norms.

Today’s recusal practice—whether rooted in unintentional hypocrisy, wishful thinking, or a pathological cognitive dissonance— …

Mcconnell’S Lust To Control The Supreme Court Could Destroy It, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

September 22, 2020: Today's Column On The Confirmation Fight, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Today's Column on the Confirmation Fight“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

September 20, 2020: Happy New Year, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Happy New Year“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.