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Articles 1 - 30 of 104
Full-Text Articles in Law
Is The Law Hopeful?, Annelise Riles
Is The Law Hopeful?, Annelise Riles
Annelise Riles
This essay asks what legal studies can contribute to the now vigorous debates in economics, sociology, psychology, philosophy, literary studies and anthropology about the nature and sources of hope in personal and social life. What does the law contribute to hope? Is there anything hopeful about law? Rather than focus on the ends of law (social justice, economic efficiency, etc.) this essay focuses instead on the means (or techniques of the law). Through a critical engagement with the work of Hans Vaihinger, Morris Cohen and Pierre Schlag on legal fictions and legal technicalities, the essay argues that what is “hopeful” …
Ethnography In The Realm Of The Pragmatic: Studying Pragmatism In Law And Politics, Annelise Riles
Ethnography In The Realm Of The Pragmatic: Studying Pragmatism In Law And Politics, Annelise Riles
Annelise Riles
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Models And Documents: Artefacts Of International Legal Knowledge, Annelise Riles
Models And Documents: Artefacts Of International Legal Knowledge, Annelise Riles
Annelise Riles
This article draws upon one year of ethnographic research at United Nations conferences to challenge some common academic assumptions about what it means to "do" international law. The article compares the work of academic international lawyers - founded in making models of an international system - to the work of practitioners - exemplified by the work of making documents, and demonstrates the particular, peculiar nature of each kind of knowledge, from the point of view of the observer. This leads to a set of conclusions concerning how an academic study of international law influenced by an appreciation of the particularity …
Wigmore's Treasure Box: Comparative Law In The Era Of Information, Annelise Riles
Wigmore's Treasure Box: Comparative Law In The Era Of Information, Annelise Riles
Annelise Riles
This article revisits the work of a canonical but quixotic figure in early American comparative law, John Henry Wigmore, as a lens through which to imagine what comparative law's role might be in the era of globalization. Wigmore's "pictorial method", compared here to the "treasure boxes" of Ming and Ch'ing Dynasty Chinese emperors, in which precious objects of different scales and eras were appreciated aesthetically side by side, presents a challenge to the many "modernist" approaches to comparative law in existence today. An exploration of the intellectual history of comparative law through the disjuncture of Wigmore's work engenders a treatment …
The View From The International Plane: Perspective And Scale In The Architecture Of Colonial International Law, Annelise Riles
The View From The International Plane: Perspective And Scale In The Architecture Of Colonial International Law, Annelise Riles
Annelise Riles
No abstract provided.
A New Agenda For The Cultural Study Of Law: Taking On The Technicalities, Annelise Riles
A New Agenda For The Cultural Study Of Law: Taking On The Technicalities, Annelise Riles
Annelise Riles
This article urges humanistic legal studies to take the technical dimensions of law as a central focus of inquiry. Using archival and ethnographic investigations into developments in American Conflict of Laws doctrines as an example, and building on insights in the anthropology of knowledge and in science and technology studies that focus on technical practices in scientific and engineering domains, it aims to show that the technologies of law - an ideology that law is a tool and an accompanying technical aesthetic of legal knowledge - are far more central and far more interesting dimensions of legal practice than humanists …
Infinity Within The Brackets, Annelise Riles
Infinity Within The Brackets, Annelise Riles
Annelise Riles
The ethnographic subjects of this article are UN-sponsored international conferences and their legal documents. Drawing upon fieldwork among Fiji delegates at these conferences, in this article I demonstrate the centrality of matters of form, as distinct from questions of “meaning,” in the negotiation of international agreements. A parallel usage of documents and of mats among Fijian negotiators provides a heuristic device for exploring questions of pattern and scale in the aesthetics of negotiation.
Real Time: Unwinding Technocratic And Anthropological Knowledge, Annelise Riles
Real Time: Unwinding Technocratic And Anthropological Knowledge, Annelise Riles
Annelise Riles
“The Bank of Japan is our mother,” bankers in Tokyo sometimes said of Japan's central bank. Drawing on this metaphor as an ethnographic resource, and on the example of central bankers who sought to unwind their own technocratic knowledge by replacing it with a real-time machine, I retrace the ethnographic task of unwinding technocratic knowledge from those anthropological knowledge practices that critique technocracy. In so doing, I draw attention to special methodological problems—involving the relationship between ethnography, analysis, and reception—in the representation and critique of contemporary knowledge practices.
An Ethnography Of Abstractions?, Annelise Riles
Hope In The Law, Annelise Riles
Who Decides On Security?, Aziz Rana
Who Decides On Security?, Aziz Rana
Aziz Rana
Despite over six decades of reform initiatives, the overwhelming drift of security arrangements in the United States has been toward greater—not less— executive centralization and discretion. This Article explores why efforts to curb presidential prerogative have failed so consistently. It argues that while constitutional scholars have overwhelmingly focused their attention on procedural solutions, the underlying reason for the growth of emergency powers is ultimately political rather than purely legal. In particular, scholars have ignored how the basic meaning of "security" has itself shifted dramatically since World War II and the beginning of the Cold War in line with changing ideas …
Settlers And Immigrants In The Formation Of American Law, Aziz Rana
Settlers And Immigrants In The Formation Of American Law, Aziz Rana
Aziz Rana
This paper argues that the early American republic is best understood as a constitutional experiment in “settler empire,” and that related migration policies played a central role in shaping collective identity and structures of authority. Initial colonists, along with their 19th century descendants, viewed society as grounded in an ideal of freedom that emphasized continuous popular mobilization and direct economic and political decision-making. However, many settlers believed that this ideal required Indian dispossession and the coercive use of dependent groups, most prominently slaves, in order to ensure that they themselves had access to property and did not have to engage …
Heuristics, Biases, And Philosophy, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Heuristics, Biases, And Philosophy, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Commenting on Professor Cass Sunstein's work is a daunting task. There is simply so much of it. Professor Sunstein produces scholarship at a rate that is faster than I can consume it. Scarcely an area of law has failed to feel his impact. One cannot today write an article on administrative law, free speech, punitive damages, Internet law, law and economics, separation of powers, or animal rights law without addressing one or more of Sunstein's papers. And his work is typically not a mere footnote. Sunstein has changed how scholars think about each of these areas of law. More broadly, …
The "New" Law And Psychology: A Reply To Critics, Skeptics, And Cautious Supporters, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
The "New" Law And Psychology: A Reply To Critics, Skeptics, And Cautious Supporters, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
No abstract provided.
Inside The Bankruptcy Judge's Mind, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Chris Guthrie, Andrew J. Wistrich
Inside The Bankruptcy Judge's Mind, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Chris Guthrie, Andrew J. Wistrich
Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
In this paper, we extend our prior work on generalist judges to explore whether specialization leads to superior judicial decision making. To do so, we report the results of a study of federal bankruptcy judges. In one prior study of bankruptcy judges, Ted Eisenberg reported evidence suggesting that bankruptcy judges, like generalist judges, are susceptible to the "self-serving" or "egocentric" bias when making judgments. Here, we report evidence showing that bankruptcy judges are vulnerable to anchoring and framing effects, but appear largely unaffected by the omission bias, a debtor's race, a debtor's apology, and "terror management" or "mortality salience."' Because …
Insurers, Illusions Of Judgment & Litigation, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Insurers, Illusions Of Judgment & Litigation, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Insurers play a critical role in the civil justice system. By providing liability insurance to parties who would otherwise be untenable as defendants, insurers make litigation possible. Once litigation materializes, insurers provide representation, pay legal fees, and often play a central role in resolving disputes through settlement or adjudication. In this paper, we explore empirically how these key litigation players make important decisions in the litigation process, like evaluating a case, deciding whether to settle, and if so, on what terms. We find that insurers that have been shown to distort litigation decision making, appear to make decisions in a …
Heuristics And Biases In Bankruptcy Judges, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Chris Guthrie, Andrew J. Wistrich
Heuristics And Biases In Bankruptcy Judges, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Chris Guthrie, Andrew J. Wistrich
Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Do specialized judges make better decisions than judges who are generalists? Specialized judges surely come to know their area of law well, but specialization might also allow judges to develop better, more reliable ways of assessing cases. We assessed this question by presenting a group of specialized judges with a set of hypothetical cases designed to elicit a reliance on common heuristics that can lead judges to make poor decisions. Although the judges resisted the influence of some of these heuristics, they also expressed a clear vulnerability to others. These results suggest that specialization does not produce better judgment.
Cognitive Errors, Individual Differences, And Paternalism, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Cognitive Errors, Individual Differences, And Paternalism, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Legal scholars commonly argue that the widespread presence of cognitive errors in judgment justifies legal intervention to save people from predictable mistakes. Such arguments often fail to account for individual variation in the commission of such errors even though individual variation is probably common. If predictable groups of people avoid making the errors that others commit, then law should account for such differences because those who avoid errors will not benefit from paternalistic interventions and indeed may be harmed by them. The research on individual variation suggests three parameters that might distinguish people who can avoid error: cognitive ability, experience …
Bottom-Up Versus Top-Down Lawmaking, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Bottom-Up Versus Top-Down Lawmaking, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Democratic legal systems make law in one of two ways: by abstracting general principles from the decisions made in individual cases (from the bottom up); or by declaring general principles through a centralized authority that are to be applied in individual cases (from the top down). These two processes are, respectively, adjudication and legislation. Each process highlights and hides different aspects of a legal problem. The single-case perspective of adjudication can seem narrow, and hence inferior to the broad perspectives that legislatures can incorporate into their decisionmaking processes. The adjudicative approach, however, has advantages that are less obvious. Notably, the …
Is The Concept Of The Person Necessary For Human Rights?, Jens David Ohlin
Is The Concept Of The Person Necessary For Human Rights?, Jens David Ohlin
Jens David Ohlin
The concept of the person is widely assumed to be indispensable for making a rights claim. But a survey of the concept's appearance in legal discourse reveals that the concept is stretched to the breaking point. Personhood stands at the center of debates as diverse as the legal status of embryos and animals to the rights and responsibilities of corporations and nations. This Note analyzes the evidence and argues that personhood is a cluster concept with distinct components: the biological concept of the human being, the notion of a rational agent, and unity of consciousness. This suggests that it is …
"Lit. Theory" Put To The Test: A Comparative Literary Analysis Of American Judicial Tests And French Judicial Discourse, Mitchel De S.-O.-L'E. Lasser
"Lit. Theory" Put To The Test: A Comparative Literary Analysis Of American Judicial Tests And French Judicial Discourse, Mitchel De S.-O.-L'E. Lasser
Mitchel Lasser
The formalism/policy dichotomy has structured American jurisprudential analyses of judicial decisionmaking for most of the twentieth century. In this Article, Professor Lasser analyzes and compares American multi-part judicial tests and French civil judicial discourse to demonstrate that the dichotomy reflects and informs the ways in which judicial decisions are written. Drawing on the works of Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, and Paul de Man, he constructs a literary methodology to analyze American and French judicial discourse. Professor Lasser contends that the formalism/policy dichotomy is part of a larger process by which the American and French judicial systems justify how they produce …
Confessions, Criminals, And Community, Sheri Lynn Johnson
Confessions, Criminals, And Community, Sheri Lynn Johnson
Sheri Lynn Johnson
No abstract provided.
Specific Agreements About Race: A Response To Professor Sunstein, Sheri Johnson
Specific Agreements About Race: A Response To Professor Sunstein, Sheri Johnson
Sheri Lynn Johnson
No abstract provided.
Killing The Non-Willing: Atkins, The Volitionally Incapacitated, And The Death Penalty, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson
Killing The Non-Willing: Atkins, The Volitionally Incapacitated, And The Death Penalty, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson
Sheri Lynn Johnson
Jamie Wilson, nineteen years old and severely mentally ill, walked into a school cafeteria and started shooting. Two children died, and Jamie was charged with two counts of capital murder. Because he admitted his guilt, the only issue at his trial was the appropriate punishment. The trial judge assigned to his case, after hearing expert testimony on his mental state, found that mental illness rendered Jamie unable to conform his conduct to the requirements of law at the time of the crime—not impaired by his mental illness in his ability to control his behavior, but unable to control his behavior. …
Probing "Life Qualification" Through Expanded Voir Dire, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, A. Brian Threlkeld
Probing "Life Qualification" Through Expanded Voir Dire, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, A. Brian Threlkeld
Sheri Lynn Johnson
The conventional wisdom is that most trials are won or lost in jury selection. If this is true, then in many capital cases, jury selection is literally a matter of life or death. Given these high stakes and Supreme Court case law setting out standards for voir dire in capital cases, one might expect a sophisticated and thoughtful process in which each side carefully considers which jurors would be best in the particular case. Instead, it turns out that voir dire in capital cases is woefully ineffective at the most elementary task--weeding out unqualified jurors. Empirical evidence reveals that many …
The Deep Grammar Of Distribution: A Meta-Theory Of Justice, Robert C. Hockett
The Deep Grammar Of Distribution: A Meta-Theory Of Justice, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
No abstract provided.
Human Persons, Human Rights, And The Distributive Structure Of Global Justice, Robert C. Hockett
Human Persons, Human Rights, And The Distributive Structure Of Global Justice, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
It is common for economically oriented transnational legal theorists to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. It is less common for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. Moreover, we effectively define ourselves and our fellow humans by reference to that which we equalize. For it is in virtue of the latter that our global welfare formulations treat us as "counting" for purposes of globally aggregating and maximizing. To analyze maximization language on the one hand, and equalization and identification language …
How The International Financial Institutions Can Help To Win Globalization Of More Stakeholders - By Making More Stockholders, Robert C. Hockett
How The International Financial Institutions Can Help To Win Globalization Of More Stakeholders - By Making More Stockholders, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
No abstract provided.
Are Housekeepers Like Judges?, Stephen P. Garvey
Are Housekeepers Like Judges?, Stephen P. Garvey
Stephen P. Garvey
Professor Greenawalt proposes that we look at interpretation "from the bottom up." By taking a close look at informal relationships between an authority and his or her agent, and how the agent "faithfully performs" instructions within such relationships, he hopes to gain insight into the problems surrounding the interpretation of legal directives. The analysis of "faithful performance" in informal contexts which Professor Greenawalt presents in From the Bottom Up is the first step in a larger project. His next step is to see what lessons the interpretation of instructions in informal contexts has for law. This Comment tries to contribute …
Decisional Sequencing: Limitations From Jurisdictional Primacy And Intrasuit Preclusion, Kevin M. Clermont
Decisional Sequencing: Limitations From Jurisdictional Primacy And Intrasuit Preclusion, Kevin M. Clermont
Kevin M. Clermont
This Article treats the order of decision on multiple issues in a single case. That order can be very important, with a lot at stake for the court, society, and parties. Generally speaking, by weighing those various interests, the judge gets to choose the decisional sequence, although the parties can control which issues they put before the judge. The law sees fit to put few limits on the judge’s power, and properly so. The few limits are in fact quite narrow in application, and even narrower if properly understood. The Steel Co.-Ruhrgas rule generally requires a federal court to decide …