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Full-Text Articles in Law

Reflections On Freedom And Criminal Responsibility In Late Twentieth Century American Legal Thought, Thomas A. Green, Merrill Catharine Hodnefield Jan 2015

Reflections On Freedom And Criminal Responsibility In Late Twentieth Century American Legal Thought, Thomas A. Green, Merrill Catharine Hodnefield

Articles

It is now a commonplace among historians that American criminal jurisprudence underwent a dramatic change something like two-thirds to three-quarters into the last century. Roughly, this development is understood as a shift (or drift) from a more-or-less pure consequentialism to a "mixed theory" wherein retributivism played a major-at times, dominant-role. As the new paradigm remains intact, now approaching a half-century, the development qualifies as a significant historical fact. The fact applies not only to the history of justification for punishment but also to conceptions of the underlying principle of (basis for) responsibility. The two are rightly distinguished: for many scholars …


From Commonwealth To Constitutional Limitations: Thomas Cooley's Michigan, 1805-1886, Robert Allan Olender Jan 2014

From Commonwealth To Constitutional Limitations: Thomas Cooley's Michigan, 1805-1886, Robert Allan Olender

SJD Dissertations

In response to what he perceived as the challenges associated with republican governance in the later portions of the nineteenth century, Michigan’s Thomas McIntyre Cooley penned his treatise concerning constitutional limitations on legislative power. In it, Cooley offered a vision of government where courts would check government power and would raise constitutional barriers against the impact of improper influences on legislators. As a student of history, Cooley grounded his beliefs and doctrines in experience, not philosophical reflections. Believing that “the fruits of speculative genius in government are of little value,” Cooley submitted that governing structures and law “must be the …


Oh, The Treatise!, Richard A. Danner Apr 2013

Oh, The Treatise!, Richard A. Danner

Michigan Law Review

In his foreword to the Michigan Law Review's 2009 Survey of Books Related to the Law, my former Duke colleague Erwin Chemerinsky posed the question: "[W]hy should law professors write?" In answering, Erwin took as a starting point the well-known criticisms of legal scholarship that Judge Harry Edwards published in this journal in 1992. Judge Edwards indicted legal scholars for failing to engage the practical problems facing lawyers and judges, writing instead for the benefit of scholars in law and other disciplines rather than for their professional audiences. He characterized "practical" legal scholarship as both prescriptive (aiming to instruct attorneys, …


The Real Formalists, The Real Realists, And What They Tell Us About Judicial Decision And Legal Education, Edward Rubin Apr 2011

The Real Formalists, The Real Realists, And What They Tell Us About Judicial Decision And Legal Education, Edward Rubin

Michigan Law Review

The periodization of history, like chocolate cake, can have some bad effects on us, but it is hard to resist. We realize, of course, that Julius Caesar didn’t think of himself as “Classical” and Richard the Lionhearted didn’t regard the time in which he lived as the Middle Ages. Placing historical figures in subsequently defined periods separates us from them and impairs our ability to understand them on their own terms. But it is difficult to understand anything about them at all if we try to envision history as continuous and undifferentiated. We need periodization to organize events that are …


Raiders Of The Lost Scrolls: The Right Of Scholarly Access To The Content Of Historic Documents, Cindy Alberts Carson Jan 1995

Raiders Of The Lost Scrolls: The Right Of Scholarly Access To The Content Of Historic Documents, Cindy Alberts Carson

Michigan Journal of International Law

In Section I of this article, I will describe the events that led to the current controversy. In Section II, I will discuss whether the content of historic documents can be classified as cultural property. In Section III, I will consider whether control of the content of these documents interferes with intellectual freedom. In Section IV, I will discuss the intellectual property arguments raised by owners and interpreters of the Scrolls. Finally, in Section V, I will propose standards for access to, and preservation of, historic documents.


Intellectual History, Probability, And The Law Of Evidence, Peter Tillers May 1993

Intellectual History, Probability, And The Law Of Evidence, Peter Tillers

Michigan Law Review

A Review of "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" ad "Probable Cause": Historical Perspectives on the Anglo-American Law of Evidence by Barbara J. Shapiro


Roman Law As A Political Agenda, Mathias Reimann May 1991

Roman Law As A Political Agenda, Mathias Reimann

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Legacy of Roman Law in the German Romantic Era by James Q. Whitman


Promise Fulfilled And Principle Betrayed, James J. White Jan 1988

Promise Fulfilled And Principle Betrayed, James J. White

Articles

My responsibility in this paper is to address three questions. (1) How has the legal realist body of thought affected contract law and its application? (2) How will contract law and its application be affected in the future by realist thinking? (3) If the realist viewpoint were fully accepted, what kind of system would result and how would contract law be affected? Because my focus is upon a principal legislative monument to realism, Article Two of the Uniform Commercial Code (the "U.C.C."), and upon its drafter, Karl Llewellyn, I will not answer any of the three questions explicitly. By focusing …


Truth And Interpretation In Legal History, G. Edward White Mar 1981

Truth And Interpretation In Legal History, G. Edward White

Michigan Law Review

The essay consists of four sections. Section I discusses the nature of historical explanation, devoting some attention to the roles of "truth," interpretation, and detachment in historical scholarship. Section II continues that discussion by exploring the meaning and the purpose of what I call "interpretive detachment" in the writing of history. Section III considers the theoretical assumptions of Marxist legal historians from the point of view developed in preceding sections. Section IV, taking into account some issues that remain problematic or troublesome, restates my approach.