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Full-Text Articles in Law

Tis A Gift To Be Simple: Aesthetics And Procedural Reform, Janice Toran Nov 1990

Tis A Gift To Be Simple: Aesthetics And Procedural Reform, Janice Toran

Michigan Law Review

This essay advances the hypothesis that aesthetic considerations play a role in the formulation of new legal procedures and the preference for one procedure over another. Of course, other considerations like the social impact of a particular procedure or procedural system, its economic consequences, and its role within existing legal institutions are important, often decisive, factors influencing procedural choice. My argument is simply that additional unarticulated and unrecognized aesthetic considerations also play a role in the procedural reform process. I refer to these elements as "aesthetic" because they focus on the formal qualities of a procedure (simplicity, elegance, coherence, and …


Justification In The Killing Of An Innocent Person, John Makdisi Jan 1990

Justification In The Killing Of An Innocent Person, John Makdisi

Cleveland State Law Review

It is appropriate to call Finnis' approach to life as an incommensurable basic human good a natural law approach. It suggests that there is more to life than just an accumulation of wealth, happiness, value, etc. There is something about life that we cannot value, that we cannot measure, that we cannot fathom, that is mysterious. While contract and even some tort law are readily adaptable to arguments of economic efficiency, there are areas where such arguments do not belong. Specifically, where the end result cannot be measured because the values at stake are incommensurable, there may be no best …