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Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Law

Courts And Cultural Distinctiveness, Marie R. Deveney Jun 1992

Courts And Cultural Distinctiveness, Marie R. Deveney

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The claim that minority ethnic and religious groups are culturally distinct from the dominant society is often, either implicitly or explicitly, a key element of demands these groups make to courts and legislatures for accommodation of their needs. In such cases, the decision maker's understanding of what constitutes "cultural distinctiveness" is crucial, for it can strongly influence the outcome of the accommodation question. In this brief Essay related to Peter Welsh's and Joseph Carens's papers and Dean Suagee's remarks delivered at the Preservation of Minority Cultures Symposium, I contrast these panelists' subtle and sophisticated understandings of cultural distinctiveness with the …


Community, Constitution, And Culture: The Case Of The Jewish Kehilah, Nomi Maya Stolzenberg, David N. Myers Jun 1992

Community, Constitution, And Culture: The Case Of The Jewish Kehilah, Nomi Maya Stolzenberg, David N. Myers

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Part I describes the historical development of the Jewish kehilah, its subsequent evolution, and eventual dissolution. Part II surveys recent trends in legal scholarship which reflect a growing consciousness of the tension between the demands of self-conscious cultural groups and liberal legal principles.


Minority Cultures And The Cosmopolitan Alternative, Jeremy Waldron Jun 1992

Minority Cultures And The Cosmopolitan Alternative, Jeremy Waldron

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

I have chosen not to talk in this Article about the warning that Rushdie is sounding in his essay In Good Faith, but to discuss more affirmatively the image of the modern self that he conveys. Still, I hope that we do not lose sight of the warning. The communitarianism that can sound cozy and attractive in a book by Robert Bellah or Michael Sandel can be blinding, dangerous, and disruptive in the real world, where communities do not come ready-packaged and where communal allegiances are as much ancient hatreds of one's neighbors as immemorial traditions of culture.


Religion And Child Custody, Carl E. Schneider Jun 1992

Religion And Child Custody, Carl E. Schneider

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Essay, I want to reflect on some problems at the intersection of religion, law, and the family. Specifically, I will explore the ways courts may consider a parent's religiously motivated behavior in making decisions about the custody of children. More precisely still, I will ask two questions. First, may a court refuse to award custody because of a parent's religiously motivated behavior in a dispute between a natural mother and a natural father? Second, when should a court agree to resolve a dispute between divorced parents over the religious upbringing of their children? These are topics of quiet …


Talking About Rights, Carl E. Schneider May 1992

Talking About Rights, Carl E. Schneider

Reviews

In recent years, a growing recognition of the power of rights talk in American law and life has surfaced in the writing of legal academics, along with a gnawing doubt about that power. In Rights Talk The lmpaverishrnent of Political Discaurse, Mary Ann Glendon, a professor of law at Harvard University, gives those doubts systematic, thoughtful, and lucid expression. Glendon has long been one of our most penetrating students of family law and one of our most enlightening students of comparative law. In this book (as in its predecessor and forebear, Abartion and Divorce in We5tem Law), she brings this …


Do Courts Matter?, Stephen L. Carter May 1992

Do Courts Matter?, Stephen L. Carter

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Hollow Hope: Ca Courts Bring About Social Change? by Gerald N. Rosenberg


'Coming To Our Senses': Communication And Legal Expression In Performance Cultures, Bernard J. Hibbitts Jan 1992

'Coming To Our Senses': Communication And Legal Expression In Performance Cultures, Bernard J. Hibbitts

Articles

This article examines how semi-literate or largely non-literate cultures having little or no experience with writing ("performance cultures") communicate and express law and legal meaning through the orchestrated use of the physical senses. It first examines how each of the senses - hearing (sound), sight, touch, smell and taste - is brought to bear in the cultural and legal experience of performance-based societies. It then considers how and why members of performance cultures "perform", i.e. use and combine various sensory media in single messages, and describes how and why they use the same strategy in creating law and legal expression. …