Law Commons^™

Law's Constitution: A Relational Critique, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is a simple fact: we begin from others. Without others we, quite literally, could not live, feel, be born. Every mother, every mother's partner, every father, every child, knows this. But law sees these relations as something lesser, as foreign. Mention the word "relationship" to the average lawyer and she will likely assume that you are talking about sex, dating, or perhaps marriage. She may even wonder what "relationship" has to do with the law at all.

In this paper, the author wonders whether it is possible to flip that equation, to think of the relational as central, rather …

Osad Moralny A Teoria Prawa (Moral Judgment And Legal Theory), David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

My theme is the role of moral judgment in legal theory. My thesis is that moral judgment provides an important constraint on various aspects of legal theory. I shall illustrate that thesis by discussing, first, the so-called "separation" of law and morals (Section I); secondly, legal interpretation (Section II); and thirdly, the "rule of law" ideal (Section III).

Can Law And Economics Be Both Practical And Principled?, David A. Hoffman, Michael P. O'Shea

All Faculty Scholarship

This article describes important recent developments in normative law and economics, and the difficulties they create for the project of efficiency-based legal reform. After long proceeding without a well articulated moral justification for using economic decision procedures to choose legal rules, scholars have lately begun to devote serious attention to developing a philosophically attractive definition of well-being. At the same time, the empirical side of law and economics is also being enriched with an improved understanding of the complexities of individuals' decision-making behavior. That is where the problems begin. Scholars may have better, more plausible conceptions of well-being in hand, …

Beyond Interpretation, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At The Law, Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

I was of three minds
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

The emergence of external disciplines within legal scholarship seems to have fractured its intellectual focus. Technical and specialized academic writing, moreover, appears to be drifting ever farther from the theaters of legal action. Judge Richard Posner's latest book of essays, Frontiers of Legal Theory, challenges such perceptions: Even as it celebrates the breadth of interdisciplinary legal scholarship, it seeks coherence among myriad methodologies. Even as it delights in the abstract constructs of social science, it emphasizes their practical impact. And as one might expect of Judge …