Law Commons^™

Law, Legitimacy, And The Maligned Adverb, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

The standard rules for good writing dictate that adverbs should be avoided. They undermine the effectiveness of the text and detract from the author’s point. Lawyers have incorporated this general rule, leading them not only to avoid adverbs in their own writings but also to overlook them in the writings of others, including statutes. However, as philosopher Michael Oakeshott has argued, law happens not in the rules but in the adverbs. Through its adverbs the law allows moral space for the citizen to consent to the social order, rather than merely conforming to an imposed command to comply. To become …

Why Law?, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Fairness, then, not order, is the special domain of law. The accompaniments of law we expect in our society flow less from law itself, and more from our changing understanding of what is fair. As our understanding of fairness changes, we expect the law to change as well. Because fairness criteria have been shown empirically to vary from society to society, we can expect legal diversity to remain an enduring feature of the jurisprudential landscape. But now we know why.

Legal Anthropology: An Introduction, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION offers an initial overview of the challenging debates surrounding the cross-cultural analysis of legal systems. Equal parts review and criticism, the author outlines the historical landmarks in the development of the discipline, identifying both strengths and weaknesses of each stage and contribution. LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY suggests that future progress can be made by treating as the distinguishing feature of law the perceived fairness of structural inequalities of social systems, rather than the traditional emphasis upon sanction or dispute resolution.

Human Nature Constraints Upon The Realistic Utopianism Of Rawls And Nussbaum, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

As Christopher Bobonich (1993, p. S92) reminds us, “The idea of basing an ethical theory on human nature has attracted Western philosophers from the very beginning of philosophical reflection on ethics.” Unfortunately many philosophers have not kept apace with the best research in the empirical disciplines exploring that topic, with the result that their works contain more impractical idealism than they intend. In order to ensure the soundness and persuasiveness of their ethical conclusions, philosophers should routinely confront the relevant social scientific literature and situate their initial assumptions within that corpus. Before expounding on how humans ought to live, the …

Prolegomenon To A Fairness-Centered Anthropology Of Law, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Legal anthropology, which began with Malinowski’s holistic reflections on law, has today drifted toward an emphasis on the study of dispute resolution. Part I outlines the three historical phases of this development—Holism, Realism, and Processualism—and identifies two shortcomings of viewing the dispute as the central problem for legal anthropology: (1) the collapse of law into dispute analyses has not been, and perhaps cannot be, fully theorized; and (2) the most pressing of current problems, such as human rights and intellectual property issues, cannot be reduced without distortion to the disputing paradigm. Part II offers fairness as an alternative organizing concept …

Corporate Domestic Partner Benefits, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Despite the common use of the term domestic partner, it remains unclear what that term means either in identifying a specific individual or in its relationship to the status of marriage. Is it a temporary substitute based on equity, or a challenger looking toward social reform? Because these positions are mutually exclusive, domestic partner benefits activists must clarify what it is they hope to achieve.

The justification for withholding equitable compensation tends to fall back on the federal DOMA and ERISA laws, which unquestionably complicate the benefits terrain. But experts agree that while these federal laws may serve as a …

Delimiting The Culture Defense, James M. Donovan, John Stuart Garth

James M. Donovan

This essay builds upon the arguments of Alison Dundes Renteln in her influential book, THE CULTURAL DEFENSE 2004), in which she argues persuasively for a uniformly recognized culture defense in certain litigations. Critiquing some of her details, we recast her three-prong culture defense test to more effectively balance the competing interests of minority culture members to have their ways of life taken seriously by the courts, and of members of the dominant tradition who wish to preserve the rule of law with its necessary perception as treating all parties equally. The offered formulation now includes the following five elements:

1. …

Act Up/Anita Bryant/Drugs, Religion, And Law/Lambda Legal Defense And Education Fund/Right To Reply And Right Of The Press/Sincerity Of Religious Belief, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

Six entries in the Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties (Paul Finkelman, ed.).

Rock-Salting The Slippery Slope: Why Same-Sex Marriage Is Not A Commitment To Polygamous Marriage, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

E.J. Graff has documented how any change in the marriage rules inevitably leads to predications of apocalyptic cries warning of "death of marriage and civilization itself." The conservative fit over the possibility of the social acceptance of same-sex marriage therefore has an ancient if repetitive script. Still, the "threat" of same-sex marriage poses for conservatives at least one atypical wrinkle. Unlike discussions of equal or even greater rancor, that raging over same-sex marriage forces its opponents to treat with special delicacy. In the case of abortion, opponents are able to argue in absolute terms: abortion is wrong, period, even if …

An Ethical Argument To Restrict Domestic Partnerships To Same-Sex Couples, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

For purposes of this Essay, the preservation of marriage in its present superior status, albeit not necessarily in its present form, constitutes a good. Further, it is a very high good within the hierarchy of values. Within the arena of domestic relations, in fact, there is no higher good. Marriage is the ground from which all other relations in an ordered society spring.

Extremists aside, gays and lesbians desire the right to marry because we value the institution, and we will herein take this state of affairs to be "good." That cannot be overstated. We like marriage, we appreciate what …

Doma: An Unconstitutional Establishment Of Fundamentalist Christianity, James M. Donovan

James M. Donovan

This Article scrutinizes the constitutionality of the intent of the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA]. According to the text of the Act, DOMA's purposes are "to define and protect the institution of marriage," where marriage is defined to exclude same-sex partners. To be constitutionally valid under the Establishment Clause, this notion that heterosexual marriage requires "protection" from gay and lesbian persons must spring from a secular and not religious source. This Article posits that DOMA has crossed this forbidden line between the secular and the religious. DOMA, motivated and supported by fundamentalist Christian ideology, and lacking any genuine secular goals …