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On Making Anti-Essentialist And Social Constructionist Arguments In Courts, Suzanne B. Goldberg
On Making Anti-Essentialist And Social Constructionist Arguments In Courts, Suzanne B. Goldberg
Faculty Scholarship
One of my most intense disagreements with another lawyer during nearly a decade of lesbian and gay rights litigation concerned social constructionism. The lawyer (a law professor, if truth be told) wanted to argue in an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court that sexual orientation, like race, was a social constructed category. He reasoned that since the Court had condemned race discrimination even while recognizing the "socio-political, rather than biological" nature of race, it would similarly be willing to invalidate a measure discriminating against lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, even while recognizing the socially constructed nature of sexual …
Critical Approaches To Property Institutions, Michael A. Heller
Critical Approaches To Property Institutions, Michael A. Heller
Faculty Scholarship
Private property is a rather elusive concept. Any kid knows what it means for something to be mine or yours, but grownup legal theorists get flustered when they try to pin down the term. Typically they, actually we, turn to a familiar analytic toolkit: including, for example, Blackstone's image of private property as "sole and despotic dominion"; Hardin's metaphor of the "tragedy of the commons"; and, more generally, the division of ownership into a trilogy of private, commons, and state forms. While each analytic tool has a distinguished pedigree and certain present usefulness, each also imposes a cost because it …
The "Battle Of The Forms": Fairness, Efficiency, And The Best-Shot Rule, Victor P. Goldberg
The "Battle Of The Forms": Fairness, Efficiency, And The Best-Shot Rule, Victor P. Goldberg
Faculty Scholarship
After the parties agree to a sale, the buyer sends a purchase order with one set of boilerplate terms on the reverse side; the seller responds with an acknowledgment and invoice with another set of boilerplate terms. Do they have a contract? If so, on what terms? This so-called "battle of the forms" has given rise to a great outpouring of scholarship and a legislative solution widely perceived as inartfully drafted and generally unsatisfactory. In particular, the Code solution has been criticized because it attempted to solve both the formation and interpretation problems with one rule. The Uniform Commercial Code …
Business Lawyers And Value Creation For Clients, Ronald J. Gilson, Robert H. Mnookin
Business Lawyers And Value Creation For Clients, Ronald J. Gilson, Robert H. Mnookin
Faculty Scholarship
This Symposium marks an important milestone in legal scholarship and education: The spotlight falls on business lawyers for a change. Ten years ago, when one of us first wrote about what business lawyers really do, no one had devoted much attention to this part of the profession. In his broadside against lawyers, Derek Bok, then President of Harvard University and formerly dean of its law school, reserved his invective for litigators and the litigation process. Business lawyers captured the attention of very few critics; even on the unusual occasion when we were noticed, the criticism was at least funny. If …